Academy of Creative and Performing Arts film makes it to Cannes
The short film Alma & Esperanza , directed by Itandehui Jansen, a PhD candidate (directing supervisor Professor Dr. Kitty Zijlmans) of the Leiden University Academy for Creative and Performing Arts, has been selected to the Short Film Corner of this year’s edition of the Cannes International Film Festival.
The short film Alma & Esperanza, directed by Itandehui Jansen, a PhD candidate of the Leiden Academy for Creative and Performing Arts, has been selected to the Short Film Corner of this year’s edition of the Cannes International Film Festival. The Short Film Corner is a program of the Cannes International Film Festival (15 th to 26 th of may 2013) dedicated to short films up to 30 minutes in length from around the world.
Itandehui Jansen made the short film Alma & Esperanza as part of her portfolio for her PhD project in the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts of Leiden University in which she is studying the politics and aesthetics of indigenous cinema. The short film previously screened at the Morelia International Film Festival in November 2012.
Last year, Itandehui’s previous short film "The Last Council" which is also part of her PhD project, received a special jury award at the Viña del Mar International Film Festival in Chile.
Alma & Esperanza is a 16-minute short fiction film about migration and displacement. The story is about Alma, a young girl living in an urban environment in the U.S, who loses her mother. Alma consequently travels to her grandmother Esperanza who lives in an indigenous village in Mexico. Although Alma and Esperanza do not speak the same language they find a way to connect and share their grief. In this short film Itandehui explores how a narrative story can be told with limited dialogue. The film also explores an aesthetic of displacement.