| Keram Malicki-Sánchez | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 14, 1974 Toronto, Ontario |
| Occupation | Actor, musician, composer, producer, writer, new media consultant |
Keram Malicki-Sánchez (born 14 May 1974) is a Canadian actor, singer, writer, new media guru, and music and film producer.
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Malicki-Sánchez was born in Toronto (Canada) to a Polish father and Ecuadorian mother. Quadrilingual, with fluency in English, French, Polish, and Spanish, he studied ecclesiastical and classical choral music at St. Michael's Choir School in Toronto.
His debut into the world of music and acting began with musical theatre and expanded outward from there. In the early stages of his career he played a variety of roles for the CBC's radio dramas, and at the age of fourteen he was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Prince Edward in an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper at the Young People's Theatre in Toronto - one of the youngest actors ever to be nominated in this category.
He has appeared in films such as John Q, Happy Campers, American History X, Drive Me Crazy, Global Heresy, Punisher: War Zone and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (franchise) as well as television series, among them CSI, 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ER, Saving Grace and Catwalk, and worked with such directors as Peter Yates, Nick Cassavetes, John Stockton, Peter Greenaway and Tony Kaye.[1]
As an actor, he has been incorrectly credited as "Karem Malicki-Sanchez" (in the film Global Heresy) and Karn Malicki-Sanchez (Garbage Pail Kids).
As a musician, Malicki-Sánchez released a solo 45" on vinyl in Spanish at the age of thirteen through Fe Discos out of Ecuador and toured the talk show circuit to promote the album.
He began his own band, Blue Dog Pict, at age fourteen. The band released three albums: The Picture Album (1990), Anxiety of Influence: a nodding into...? (1992), and Spindly Light Und Wax Rocketines (1995) that were distributed by Distribution FUSION III out of Montreal, Canada.
In 1990, he founded Constant Change Productions, an independent record label, and new media company that still maintains an active online community 15 years later; a community that grew from its origins in the IRC chatrooms frequented by the administrators of Internex online (Canada's first ISP) in the early 1990s. From 2000-2009, the "Freedom v2.5" community site created and moderated by Malicki-Sanchez was dedicated to Freedom of Information and searching for the truth by way of intelligent discussion on all topics. It was populated by "Sky Pirates" a name once used for fans of Malicki-Sánchez's band Blue Dog Pict, but later for those who were most loyal to the Constant Change ethic.
In 1995 Keram created Automated Gardens - an ambient electronic solo project and released a cassette tape called "Automated Gardens: AN4" that sold 1,000 copies and charted in the top independent sellers at the now extinct record store SAM the Record Man in Toronto. Keram later add Blue Dog Pict soundman and co-producer Joshua Miles Joudrie and later Jason "DJ Shine" Spanu" to the roster and the outfit played various raves in Ontario, Canada including sharing a bill with Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman. The electronica outfit later placed three important music cues in the independent feature Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy about the 1990's rave scene and based on the novel Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance directed by Rob Heydon and starring Kristin Kreuk and Billy Boyd.
Circa 1996, around the time of the release of Blue Dog Pict's third album Malicki-Sanchez also founded Robot Pride Day, an ironic annual global festival celebrated on August 4. (logs of the annual "state of the union" address can be found in the RPD archives at robotprideday.com
He also performs music under his own name and has songs on various original film soundtracks including MGM's Uptown Girls (released on Nettwerk Records), New Line Cinema's Happy Campers, and Broken (Fuel 2000) for which he performed opposite the film's star Heather Graham in a video for the song "The Hanging Tree" that he composed.[2] Under the Automated Gardens moniker, he and DJ Shine licensed four more tracks to the film Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy whose soundtrack includes some of the top electronic musics artists of the decade.
Malicki-Sánchez moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s where he continues to work and teach as an actor, write, and perform music live under the moniker "Keram". As the artist "Keram" he was a regular at Hollywood's Hotel Cafe - from the same time period that brought national recognition to such singer/songwriters as Josh Radin, Cary Brothers, Joe Purdy and Meiko. He released his album at Room 5 in Los Angeles, January 21, 2008 and collaborated on songs with singer Aimee Lynn Chadwick, Jordan Bridges and the late Brittany Murphy with a side project called Blue Rose Harlots.
January 25, 2008, Keram released his solo debut acoustic album "Box",[3][4] described as a precursor to his full-band record "Come to Life." It became a Top Seller at CDBaby.com,[5] the album's distributor, within its first week. His official website Keramsongs.com contains a unique catalog of many of his unreleased and rare musical recordings.
In 2006, Malicki-Sanchez wrote directed and produced a one hour fictional film about this early online community and the Sky Pirates entitled "The Charge of the 08.ZIYA". The logline describes the film as: "A network of young rebels assume their online Sky Pirate personas to combat the Corprat Empyre in this fantastic rescue mission to restore the scope of imagination and save the next generation from an insidious marketing shell game." The film is scored by Automated Gardens.
Strongly entrenched in the New Media, Malicki-Sánchez has been invited to speak on various panels concerning technology and the arts by the North by Northeast (NXNE) music conference, the Toronto Sun, the 2007 NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas, Cinegear Expo in Los Angeles and the Toronto Star.
While a student at Ryerson University in Toronto, in the first year of the University's New Media program, he co-authored (with Lee Towndrow, a student in the radio and television program) one of the first ever enhanced CDs released by a band: Spindly Light und Wax Rocketines, Blue Dog Pict's third release, featured a MAC/PC compatible Myst-style video game about the legend of the Sky Pirates. Malicki-Sánchez worked directly with the CD manufacturer to create a method for putting the data on track 0 so that the listener could also just put the CD in their player and listen to music (considered an innovation at the time).
He was later a student in the first years of UCLA Extension's Film, Television and Digital entertainment and Cinematography programs. He graduated from the UCLA program with distinction in 2009. His first short film A Killer App was accepted into the Glastonbury, Atlanta Horror Film Festivals and was an award winner at the Accolade Film Festival, and Shockfest for Best Monster Creation. His subsequent short film Tulip Pink toured the film festival circuit and screened to sold out theaters at the Newport Beach Film Festival among others. His third short How (Not) To Become a Vampire made the festival rounds in 2011 and features motion graphics by John Watson who also worked as a compositor on Resident Evil: Extinction.
He also works as a social media consultant and SEO consultant and runs a wide variety of online portals under the Constant Change Media Group banner - the online iteration of his CCP music and production label.
In September, 2008, Keram launched the Keramcast - a podcast he hosts that is a digest for the topics discussed at his various blogs that include TheCulturepin.com, Taste Odyssey, IndieGameReviewer.com, MusicZeitgeist.com and 7DLabs.com.
He went on to complete courses in C, Visual Basic, Java and C++ at UCLA Extension's Application Programming program.