Video Essay
This video essay uses cyanotypes created from digital photos I took between 2006 and 2008. I unpack my own discomfort with my initial exposure to the Spanish language and reflect on a trip to visit the US / Mexico border in Tijuana when I participated in when I was nineteen.
Official Selection: Corto Creativo Short Film Festival, Film for Peace, ULTRACinema, Experimental Film Guanajuato, The North Film Festival, Festival Fotogenia, FEDAXV 2024, International Migration & Environmental Film Festival, Festival Santiago Álvarez
Videopoems
“signs” is a short videopoem that briefly explores the idea of longing and connection in a rapidly changing world. I filmed the images using my mobile phone and digitally stitched in the footage of a butterfly. I then exported the footage as individual frames and exposed cyanotypes of the frames on the roof and fire escape of my apartment. I rinsed them in my bathtub. I scanned the images to recreate them as a cyanotype animation frame by frame.
Official Selection: WORLDTHREADING Film Fest, Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival, MicroActs Artist Film Screening, 11th Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition, International Moving Film Festival, Encuentro Internacional de Cineastas
A short videopoem on the wistful and melancholy side of growth. Filmed on Super 8 in Queens, New York.
Official Selection: Berlin Flash Film Festival, Athens 10th International Video Poetry Festival, Helios Sun Poetry Film Festival, Berlin Minute Film Festival, New York Super Shorts Film Festival, ULTRACinema, Barcelona International Film Festival, La Poesia Che Si Vede: International Competition for Poetry Films, Sydney Australian Film Festival, FEDAXV 2023, Diminuto International Minimum Film Festival, Millennium Film Forum’s The Poetic Lens
After returning to northern New York after a year in Spain, I wrote this poem about my rural existence in the language still in my head, Spanish. A few years after that, in New York City, I asked my friend, the Spanish designer and artist Maria Flores Galindo, if she would read the poem for me. A couple years after that, I went home and shot the rural scenes on Super 8 film and created this piece.
Official Selection: Berlin Flash Film Festival, Barcelona Short Film Festival, International Poetry Film Festival of Thuringia, ULTRAcinema, Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival Vienna
Audio Documentary
As New York City continues to welcome migrants to the city, mutual aid groups are expanding networks they created in 2020 to respond to new needs within the city. I connected with Sunnyside Woodside Mutual Aid member, Angela Callisaya, to learn more about how she is supporting the community by teaching an ESL class for new New Yorkers. We also hear from the policy expert Sam Stanton and Make the Road’s Leslie Ariza.
This piece was created in the Craig Newmark School of Journalism audio documentary course with the direction of Veralyn Williams and is hosted on New York City’s News Service. It was also included in AudioFiles Season 13.
This mini doc is about the attempt to document someone you love and a way for me to repurpose old and quality-compromised footage.
The Lost Donut shop is a personal short audio documentary about what it means to lose and grieve places and people close to us. This is an homage to the neighborhood of Sunnyside, Queens and features Souk El Shater’s Mohammad Osman, Dave Acocella of Philomena’s Pizza, and Sunnyside resident and Algiers drummer, Matt Tong.
This is an audio-based animation project that explores the quiet side of sobriety—private moments of joy but also the connection and support the sober community creates for each other. These two short vignettes use on-screen text and images to illustrate each subject’s edited audio contribution. Featuring David Perezcassar, an artist and illustrator, and Edith Zimmerman, a writer and comic creator.
This piece was selected as part of DOC NYC’s 2022 student program.
Narrative Film
I had three main roles in Tree House – co-director, producer, and editor. However, as a crew of mainly three people (myself, the film’s writer, and its director of photography), we all worked closely in many different roles simultaneously. We shot this piece in a little over a week on a working dairy farm in Northern New York.
Official Selection: Sunnyside Shorts International Film Festival, Indie Short Fest, Dumbo Film Festival, Adirondack Film Festival 2020 and featured in “Festival Films: Spotlight on New York Shorts” on Mountain Lake PBS.