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Let's Make Jam

When a depressed lesbian escapes away to an artist residency cottage with her girlfriend to avoid staying home, she faces the truth about her avoidant instincts to escape as she struggles to cope with the death of her father with her emotionally unavailable mother.

  • Vanesa Moreno
    Director
  • Vanesa Moreno
    Writer
  • Ashley Dean
    Producer
  • Lenny Mendez
    Key Cast
    "Paloma"
  • Alexis Dacosta
    Key Cast
    "Ophelia"
  • Catalina Parks
    Key Cast
    "Grecia"
  • Carly Kaderli
    Director of Photography
  • Trisha Nguyen
    1st Assistant Director
  • Amani Hagmagid
    2nd Assistant Director
  • Maya Baskin
    Key Grip
  • Cheryl-Anne Fries
    Production Designer
  • Alana-Marie French
    Composer
  • Allie Ochsner
    Editor
  • Ashley-Nicole Meadows
    Script Supervsior
  • Hanna Kivlighan
    Camera Operator
  • Amy Nietes
    1st Assistant Camera
  • Andrea Batista
    Best Boy Grip
  • Jon Parker
    Sound Mixer
  • Kelly Galicia
    Set Decorator
  • Nicole Corwin
    Hair and Makeup
  • Miranda Hugo
    Storyboard Artist
  • Yasi Durant
    Sound Designer
  • Sophia Schrock
    Marketing/Distribution
  • Jesslyn McCartney
    BTS Photographer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    25 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    December 15, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    2,600 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    DIGITIAL
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Vanesa Moreno

Vanesa Moreno is a 23 year old Bolivian-American filmmaker and photographer. A Taurus sun, Pisces moon, and Gemini rising with a love for the movies on Criterion even though she has no paid subscription for it. She is a member at FREE THE WORK and a member of Women of Color Unite (WOCU), Chicana Director’s Initiative (CDI) as well as Sporas, a cinematographer collective. Her work can be found on ARRAYCrew, a profile database available to hundreds of hiring managers in the film and tv industry.

After graduating from VCUarts Cinema with her BA in Cinema and minor in Business in 2021, she entered the independent filmmaker life by moving to Los Angeles and pursuing freelance film production work in the camera department.

Using her personal experiences and Gen-Z brain, she aims to tell poignant stories of the immigrant experience, depressed bisexuals, and complex relationship dynamics. She courageously centers her narrative writings around identity, love, community and family. She loves to take pictures on her film cameras, unwind by cooking a good meal up in the kitchen and anxiously tries to write scripts in her free time. Aside from filmmaking, she loves astrology, traveling, discovering new music, foreign cinema, thrift shopping, going to shows and watching funny Tiktoks.

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Director Statement

Losing my uncle suddenly in 2020 drove me to want to write a story about grief and helped pave the way for me to deal with his passing. The experience of losing a loved one is so real and relatable to all of us living in a pandemic. Especially someone who I had only fond and funny memories of. I had to express my own obvious immigrant experience in my film. The need to want to be there with your family but the odds just are not in your favor. The film touches on coping mechanisms and things like journaling, meditation, religion and spirituality which are topics I was interested in and exploring during quarantine. Originally having it set in Sweden (absurdly for a feature film), I decided to go with a proof of concept short for potential future development. I had a desire to explore these things and fell into escapism as I wrote towards what I was garnering interests for and put them in my writing. With COVID too, we found ourselves much more drawn to find an outlet to cope with what’s in front of us. I found writing this in the film to be very rewarding because of that. I also genuinely always wanted to write about a complex mother-daughter relationship that is loosely similar to mine. The sincere love queer women experience with each other is another part of this film that I loved writing and exploring with inspiration from queer cinema like Desert Hearts and watching Eric Rohmer films. With my character's queer romantic relationship, I loved the idea of merging something so sweet like jam to display their love and the acceptance from an important figure.

In my filmmaking journey, I want to see more diverse queer stories with black and brown leads. We are no longer just side characters. We are the main characters.