After witnessing my grandmother struggle with dementia, I realized the fleetingness of memories as a lost historical archive. I was inspired to use the memories of my only surviving grandparent to write a history that does not exist in archives or films.
In my current project, Cine Victoria, I illustrate memories through the use of oral histories, charcoal drawings and 20th century film excerpts. I explore themes of representation, social class, and elitism.
A space, like a cinema, is big enough to hold contradictions and juxtapositions. It also reflects the complexities of the wider culture it is situated in. In this way, we individuals are also spaces, like a theater, as are families, cities and countries. By mining both collective and individual memory, the work deals in fragments and through these deconstructed pieces, we can more clearly see the constructions they came from.
I am a non-fiction filmmaker with an intuitive, editing-centered process that is led by the story and executed by collaging mediums and textures. My work is about family as a window into the history of the mestizo Latinx-American, seeking to answer questions that might not have answers. Drawings, storytelling, and archival media come together to make a time traveling machine, and coincidence and magic seek truth.