The Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival (LALIFF, for its acronym in English) is stomping in its 21st edition. After having adapted to the sanitary conditions imposed by COVID and adjusting its program to virtuality in 2021, this 2022 the renowned event is reunited with an audience already eager to see, in person, the work of Latino filmmakers, actresses and actors, producers and other audiovisual professionals who make the film industry a diverse, multicultural and bold space.
This year’s program includes narrative films, documentaries, feature films and short films produced in Latin America, Puerto Rico, the United States, and Canada. 50 percent of the films that will be screened at LALIFF are directed by women.
One of those productions is “Fingerprint”, by the Dominican actress, writer and director Gabriela Ortega. The 14-minute short film explores the stages of the duel of a flamenco dancer named Daniela. With skill, talent and living art as the only way to transcend pain and a kind of generational curse, the protagonist seeks a cure for all her traumas in this spectacular and powerful Spanish genre.
“I knew I wanted to direct a fiction. Up to this point I had co-directed, written, acted and made a documentary as a director, and I realized that I fell in love with directing, because my background comes from theater and acting. That is why, in the pandemic, I saw this opportunity to reinvent myself, because I was reflecting a lot about grief, migration and my place in the world. I connected a lot while I was away, because I’m from the Dominican Republic, and I began to connect with that spirituality, that family heritage, ”says the 26-year-old filmmaker in conversation with AL DÍA from her residence in Los Angeles. “I had a dream and I saw that chain of women, like they all connected and danced together and that image inspired me to write “Huella”, because we were and still are in a time of great mourning and much loss. Even after making the film, I lost my grandmother, so it was all very crazy to live the short to a certain extent”, she says about the creative process of her short film.
Ortega has wanted to put the figure of women and the tradition that is transmitted from generation to generation in a central axis. To do this, he appealed to stories narrated in his family environment, and weaved in his mind cycles lived by his ancestors in an oppressive military dictatorship that has shed blood and violated the rights of women for more than three decades in his native country. “The issue of child marriage had always caught my attention, the link with the Catholic Church, the hypocrisy, the duality, how we idolize certain figures, and at the same time we do not take care of the people we have next to us. And they were things that he wanted to subtly explore, but the story is about this girl (Daniela). When I touch on political issues or social issues in my work, I don’t like to do it literally, I like to approach them from a character, or from a specific story or a very intimate bond”, she adds. “With my work, I hope to be able to say something, reflect something of what is happening in the world. For me, art is that, how we can be a mirror for what is happening, what has happened and how things repeat themselves or how they can change, ”she indicates.
And the one chosen to interpret this character wrapped in allegories and symbolism has been Shakira Barrera: a Latina who exudes authenticity. “She came to collaborate with us with a lot of passion to make art. And I always remember one of the last days of shooting, in which she had been dancing for hours and hours, she looked exhausted, but she looked at us and said: Guys, we are making art! It was a special moment because she showed how committed she was to the project”, comments Brazilian Rafael Thomaseto, who, together with Helena Sardinha, is the producer of “Huella”. “Shakira is one of the best people I have ever worked with, and I know I want to work with her for many years to come. Shakira Barrera: remember the name. She is a literal star,” says Ortega.
The short film was produced as part of Lena Waithe’s Rising Voices grant and has been included in the official selection for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest 2022, and this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival. It will be screened at the Los Angeles Latino Film Festival on June 2 (in person at the TCL Chinese Theaters in Hollywood, California) and virtually on June 5. More information can be obtained at laliff.org/festival/2022/huella