Sundance Film Festival 2022: Shakira Barrera and Gabriela Ortega Celebrate Their Latino Ancestors In Huella
Writer-director Gabriela Ortega makes her Sundance debut with the short film Huella. Starring Shakira Barrera, Huella follows a disenchanted flamenco dancer who dances through the five stages of grief through her female ancestors after her grandmother’s death unleashes a generational curse. The film was produced through Lena Waithe’s Rising Voices program that focuses on uplifting emerging BIPOC filmmakers. I spoke with Gabriela Ortega and Shakira Barrera at Sundance Film Festival 2022 about Huella and telling authentic Latino stories.
I come from a line of very strong women and I think that's what built me into who I am today.
Gabriela Ortega shared that the strong women in her life inspired the story of Huella. “I wrote it right before the pandemic started as a treatment and what inspired me in that moment was the stories I was collecting from my mom and my grandma from Dominican Republic. I always do a bit of a scavenger hunt when I go home,” Ortega told me. “At one point you start getting to know your parents as almost friends or as real people and so I was just very inspired by their journeys. I come from a line of very strong women and I think that's what built me into who I am today. My grandma had four daughters and she was a single mom and so that made me see this image of this chain of women supporting each other, almost like a dream.”
When the pandemic hit, the framing of grief and loneliness and not being able to say goodbye to people you love really started to take shape in the story. “It kept me sane and creative in the middle of 2020 to write this and it was very cathartic,” said Ortega. She took all that work applied to the Rising Voices program, but didn’t have high hopes. “I didn't think it was going to get in because you read it on the page and it's like, ‘Who's going to give me money to do this?’ Like, this is the thing I shelve and I bring back when I have like a name in the industry or whatever,” Ortega said. Lena Waithe and her team picked 10 directors of color through the Rising Voices program to help their short films, including Huella, be made. “Since that program and building that community, it’s been a game changer for me. Having Huella to be a calling card and say, ‘Hey, this is what I can do when you give me support’ has been incredible. We’ve had a beautiful journey with it and now being here at Sundance is insane. I’m just so grateful to them.”
Huella puts dance at the focus to tell this moving story of grief and female ancestors. “I’m a lover of dance. I think in another life I would have loved to be a ballerina,” said Ortega. “I've always been this observer and what I loved about flamenco was how it could be very masculine and feminine at the same time. I love working with opposing forces. To me, the women in my family and the structure of my country and the machismo of my country, they've always been in that line of the masculine and the feminine. They've always been fighting, like walking that tightrope, you know? That was why flamenco. I think dance is that place in between where you can express anything with your body and […] it's just so magical.”
Actress Shakira Barrera takes on the lead role of Daniela in Huella. Barrera and Ortega had initially met during a table read for another project. Ortega felt she would be perfect for the project, so she reached out to her on Instagram. She knew Barrera was a dancer, but didn’t realize she’d picked the perfect person for the job, as Barrera had trained in flamenco for a decade and already played the castanets. “There's something so special that happened because you're not studying to be something. It already was ingrained in me,” said Barrera about when she found out she’d be performing flamenco in the short. “I do feel most like myself when I am expressing myself through dance. [Flamenco is] not common. It’s not something that is studied normally. People know more jazz, tap, more in that vein when they’re younger. So to do flamenco is a very bold choice. It's passion and it's grounded, but at the same time it's free,”
Both women feel a sense of responsibility in their work when it comes to representing their Latino experiences. “As an immigrant and as a Dominican woman, I feel a responsibility to paint Dominicans in a positive light and authentically. I'm also very aware of the anti-Blackness in our community and so I want to reject those notions. I want to make art that is inclusive and reflective of the community I grew up with because Dominican Republic is so mixed. It’s primarily Black. That’s something I don’t want to shy away from,” said Ortega. “[I] also want to uplift new people, new voices, new blood. Like, what can we say about ourselves beyond this box we’ve been put in, you know? That’s all my work. Even if it’s not Dominican, it’s Dominican.”
Even if it’s not Dominican, it’s Dominican.
“For me, being an indigenous woman who is very aware of our representation on screen, Nicaragua has little no to representation,” said Barrera. “When you don’t see enough of what you want you tend to put it on your shoulders, but I think that we focused on the work and it just speaks for itself. Let’s just tell amazing stories, let’s tell different Latino stories, and I think that’s the direction that we’re headed.”
When it comes to the future, the team behind Huella hope to turn the film into a feature. “We're hoping for people to see us and see our team and hire us because we're ready and we have a lot of stories to tell,” said Ortega, while Barrera chimed in: “Let's take some action towards telling our stories and supporting each other. Let's put our money where our mouth is.”
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