Keram Malicki-Sánchez is an actor, musician, writer, filmmaker, interactive media and virtual reality developer, multimedia artist, and event producer.
Acting career
Malicki-Sánchez is an actor with over 65 professional credits in theater, film, television and voiceover whose career debuted in musical theatre at the age of seven in the title role of Oliver! at the Limelight Dinner Theatre in Toronto. He later starred in the original musical version of Mordecai Richler's Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1984) which won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Revue or Musical, directed by Peter Moss. In 2013, in the role of Kenny, he was chainsawed in half by Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw 3D, a film that MTV wrote "shocked the box office with [a] #1 debut, topping both Django Unchained and The Hobbit." In 2020 Malicki-Sanchez starred in the role of eccentric artist Zeke in a comedic web series for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called 'Decoys' whose ensemble cast was nominated at the Canadian Screen Awards for Best Web Series.
Musical career
In 1987, at age 13, Malicki-Sanchez released a solo 45" on vinyl, in Spanish, through Ecuador's Fe Discos. In 1990, he founded the record label Constant Change Productions out of Toronto, and formed his band, Blue Dog Pict. The band released three albums: The Picture Album (1990), Anxiety of Influence: a nodding into...? (1992), and Spindly Light Und Wax Rocketines (1995), all distributed by Montreal's Distribution FUSION III. The band's song "One Hour's Sleep" was featured in the Degrassi High TV movie "School's Out." The band and its cult-like following is discussed in a section of the book "Any Night of the Week" about the history of Canadian rock music by Jonny Dovercourt.
In 1995, Constant Change released Irrevocable Upgrade, a compilation of exotic musical works which Malicki-Sanchez curated and produced.
In 1998, Malicki-Sanchez launched the band Ribcage, with Eric Ryder Costello and Paul Gallinato, and toured Cleveland and New York, releasing one album, For Machines to Dream About. In 2003 he wrote and performed the song The Truth Be Told for the film Uptown Girls.
In January 2008, Malicki-Sanchez began releasing albums under the solo name Keram, launching a music video for the song Antiskeptic, before releasing his solo debut acoustic album Box. In 2014, he released the album Come to Life, which includes contributions from over 30 musicians, including Alex Lifeson on guitar. He later crowdfunded to produce three songs: (Don't Get Caught) By the Dazzling Charades (2018), Artificial Intelligence (2019) and That Light (2020).
He has also composed for several movies shown on Lifetime Movie Network and PixL: Mr. Write (2016), Twist of Fate (2016), Bad Date Chronicles (2017),Same Time Next Week (2017) and Sleeping With Danger (2020). and his music has been licensed to over 25 films and television shows.
Filmmaking
Malicki-Sanchez received certificates in cinematography, digital media, and film producing at UCLA Extension. His first short film A Killer App won the Best Monster Creation award winner at the 2010 Shockfest Film Festival. His short film Tulip Pink was screened at the 2011 Newport Beach Film Festival and other film festivals. His third short How (Not) To Become a Vampire made the festival rounds in 2011, screening at the Austin Film Festival and winning a People's Choice Award at the Zero Film Festival in Toronto.
New media
In 1994, Malicki-Sánchez founded Robot Pride Day, an ironic annual festival that is still celebrated.
In September 2008, Malicki-Sanchez launched Keramcast, a podcast that was a digest for the topics discussed on his various blogs, and at IndieGameReviewer.com, also referred to as 'IGR', an indie game review blog. He maintains the position of editor-in-chief.
In 2020 Malicki-Sanchez was the project lead for a company called Spatialized Events, which was dedicated to immersive media showcases in WebXR. Working with lead developer James Baicoianu, he designed a variety 3D worlds for his VRTO and Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories virtual events using threejs and Blender, the latter could also play stereoscopic 5.7k spherical video with ambisonic audio, VOIP, and video chat (all programmed using the elation engine and powered by JanusWeb and AWS. Malicki-Sanchez developed interfaces and tools to create a solution that could be licensed to 3rd party festivals and conferences. Eighty per cent of the codebase used JavaScript and the JanusXR codebase, with the remainder being CSS, PHP, and HTML.