This short film will screen with other short films in
The Opening Night Block – Block 4 | LAS JEFAS BLOCK
Friday, December 9th at 7pm
Palm Springs Art Museum. Palm Springs, California.
Buy Tickets Here
This short film will screen with other short films in
The Opening Night Block – Block 4 | LAS JEFAS BLOCK
Friday, December 9th at 7pm
Palm Springs Art Museum. Palm Springs, California.
Buy Tickets Here
After the death of her grandfather, a young woman experiences a spiritual awakening when she is called by Yemaya, the orisha Goddess of the Sea.
Alexis Garcia is an award winning writer, director and proud Afro Boricua whose work has spanned both TV and digital. Through her previous work at Univision and current work as Supervising Producer for BuzzFeed’s Pero Like, Alexis has honed an expertise in Latinx audience development & storytelling across multiple platforms. She was the creator and showrunner of the Webby Award winning series, “Mi Quinceañera Come True,” and is a 2022 recipient of the LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship in partnership with Netflix. Alexis is passionate about driving critical conversations that both inform and uplift the Latinx community.
My grandmother is a spiritualist healer and medium who owned a botanica in the Bronx for many years before retiring to the mountains of Puerto Rico with my grandfather, a lifelong dream they both shared of returning to the island. Their home in Naranjito, PR, was where all of my brothers, cousins, and I would spend our summers. Dreams were more vivid there, and the slow pace of life forced us to learn its simplicity. Once a week we would take a trip down the mountain to visit family or go to the beach. We were always doing ritual cleansings in the ocean, but it wasn’t until adulthood that I began to appreciate the baños (ritual baths), protective spells and regular blessings that were bestowed upon us as more than just what my family did, and recognized them as part of a larger cultural tradition passed down from generation to generation, practiced in backyards and kitchens, behind the veil of Christianity.
Daughter of the Sea spotlights this connection, and is about a spiritual awakening I experienced myself as I came into adulthood. This connection has enhanced all aspects of my life, grounded me when times were hard, and served as a compass as I discovered my own identity. I wanted to capture those nuances in narrative form while highlighting one of the most important figures in African Yoruba spirituality, along with the rituals that have been preserved to nurture our connection between the physical and spirit world. The folklore conserved via oral tradition has also found a place in this film, strengthening our connection to the past, and safeguarding it for the future.
In my experience as a child of the diaspora, I have always been seeking something that was missing or felt left behind. I understand this experience as not unique to just me, and could be much more universal to humanity itself. We are all always seeking, and trying to remember what we’re looking for at the same time.
This film is an ode to our ancestors, their magic, and the source from which we came.
