Angela

ÁNGELA was a unique experience for both actress Idalmis García and me. Having recently emigrated from Cuba, we wanted to make a film about our experiences as immigrants in New York City. But there was one problem - we had no money to make it!

This lack of resources threw us into an unusual creative journey. Idalmis and I (a two-people operation) started filming improvisations in public spaces, interacting with people who didn't know they were being part of a fictional plot.

After a few months of these filmed improvisations, Ángela, the character, was born. Then we sketched a plot for her and used simple narrative cues to keep triggering specific interactions within the spaces we "infiltrated". The result is a fictional story with documentary value.

One of the unintended values of the short is that it might be the first narrative film to show the Central Park rumba, a decades-long tradition amongst Cuban (and other Latino) exiles in NYC. Actually, many of the rumberos ended up in the film as first-time actors.

Two years later, our little weekend project has been shown by 30+ festivals all over the world, including Glasgow, New Orleans, Oaxaca, Third Horizon, Trinidad + Tobago, and the HBO New York Latino Film Festival. It's also been on a few streaming services but never available online so, hopefully, Short of the Week will help us reach a much wider audience.

Thanks for watching it!