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A collection of award-winning short films by Latina and Indigenous directors will be showcased Tuesday, March 25, as part of the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute (MACRI) and MonteVideo's Latina Spring series.
Salón de Cortos will be showcased at La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México at 600 Hemisfair Plaza Way. It features short film selections from directors with ties to Texas, Mexico and Costa Rica.
TPR's Marian Navarro spoke with filmmaker Samantha Ramirez-Herrera about her short, El Regreso, or The Return.
Navarro will also moderate a post-screening Q&A at Salón de Cortos on Tuesday with El Paso-based filmmaker Jackie Barragan on her film, Echoes of the Rio.
RSVP here.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Samantha Ramirez Herrerra: So, my film El Regreso, is a story about me going back to Mexico where I was born after living in the U.S. for 30 years. I'm currently under the DACA program, and I had the opportunity to go back through Advance Parole during Day of the Dead. It’s an exploration of fractured identity and reclaiming things that I feel were lost through migration.
Marian Navarro: Like you said, this film is very much so representative of your own experiences, your own perspective as someone with DACA — the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals program. I'd love to hear about what really inspired and what really drove you to start making the film. What was the driving force behind it?
Ramirez Herrerra: I've always been a storyteller. I feel like it's in my DNA. And I didn't go to school for film because I was undocumented for a long time, so college was not something that I had access to. For me, storytelling was a way of telling the world, “Here I am,” in a world [where] undocumented immigrants are told to be invisible, to be quiet, all of these different things.
So for me, telling this story was so important because I dreamed about having the opportunity to go back to Mexico to see family members that I remembered as a little kid. To just walk the land again. And for so long, it felt impossible. So for me, being able to have this piece of paper that essentially tells you, hey, you can leave the country and re-enter. Of course, there's a warning, like you may not be able to enter. It's up to an officer's discretion, and it's risky, right? But for me, it was important to take this journey and to document it, because as a storyteller, I have worked telling the stories of so many different people in my career.
For me, it was my opportunity to be in the driver's seat and to own my narrative and to tell a story that was singular to me in my own way. And that was important to me.
Navarro: Why do you think that filmmaking specifically allows you to do this and makes a good medium to be able to tell your story in a way that people can resonate with and can understand? Why did you choose filmmaking specifically?
Ramirez Herrerra: I oftentimes think that I didn't pick filmmaking. I think that filmmaking picked me because for a long time, I did not know what I was going to do with my life. Growing up as an undocumented immigrant, I felt like the only options I had for a long time were working in the service industry, which I did after high school. I worked at restaurants, I cleaned people's houses, I walked dogs, I even made piñatas and sold them to Mexican bakeries. I did all of the different service industry jobs.
So, filmmaking for me started when I started a YouTube channel and started filming myself, and started filming other people who had big dreams, and I never thought about it in a way of, “Oh, like, I'm gonna be this filmmaker. I'm gonna go and make films.” It was more about, I have a story to tell, people have a story to tell, and I'm doing it my way.
It was just like a natural evolution that when it came time for me to take this journey, I was already, you know, making films for other people, for nonprofits, social impact films, and it was just the natural evolution to say, “Hey, it's my turn to tell my story.” I just felt like I had a story to tell, and I wanted to tell it in the most authentic and pure way.
Navarro: El Regreso is one of several films that is going to be showcased at the Salón de Cortos event at UNAM on March 25 here in San Antonio. The event itself highlights several award-winning films [from] Latina and Indigenous women. And there's a common theme with all of these films, in that they deal with topics relating to either immigration or identity, heritage, their own Latino/Latina experience.
This month is, of course, Women's History Month. But beyond that, why is it important to highlight and to showcase these kinds of films made by Latina and Indigenous filmmakers?
Ramirez Herrerra: I think the question is, why not? Like, why not? We know that predominantly the film industry has been predominantly white. That our stories have been excluded from so many different stages and places, and we have a story to tell, so why not show it? And I think that we're here. We exist. We all have a story to tell, and so it's important now more than ever to watch these stories, because they're a real representation of our lived experiences, and they're told by us and not by somebody else who hasn't experienced the lives that we experience.
Navarro: What do you want people to take away after viewing your documentary?
Ramirez Herrerra: My documentary was made for people who know what it's like to be displaced, people who know what it feels like to belong to no land and to live between worlds. And that does not have to mean just Mexican immigrants. I've had people from so many walks of life relate to the different emotions in it from different perspectives.
The biggest takeaway that I would like people to have when they walk away watching El Regreso is to have their own introspection. To have their own internal dialogue with themselves and reassess the narratives that we have told ourselves and decide and choose to write a new story. Because for me in El Regreso, it was about challenging the narratives of my parents, of them telling me that Mexico is a bad place, or that the American Dream was like the highest goal. But for me, it was like going back to Mexico was a challenge of all of those narratives. I had to be willing to let those narratives crumble and a new dream to be born.
So, I hope that when people walk away, that they also feel that it's okay as first gen, as immigrants, to ask themselves if what they've been sold as the American Dream is still what they want to keep chasing.
