A Southern Life in Scandalous Times: "SHE SINGS TO THE STARS" Comes Home To New Mexico

Friday, April 1, 2016

"SHE SINGS TO THE STARS" Comes Home To New Mexico

A new feature film shot in New Mexico titled She Sings to the Stars, challenges audiences to ponder that question as our world is turned upside down. After winning “Best Feature” at the Toronto Independent Festival, the"Audience Award" and "Best Actor” at the Vermont International Film Festival this fall, She Sings to the Stars will screen in Albuquerque on April 20 at the KiMo Theatre at 5:30 PM as part of the Albuquerque Film and Music Experience.

Produced by Circeo Films of Monkton, VT, the film has also been selected by festivals like Montreal World, Red Nation (Los Angeles), Blow-up Arthouse (Chicago), Queens World (New York), and American Indian (San Francisco).

Producer Jonnie Corcoran adds: "This is a quintessentially New Mexican film and story.” She Sings to the Stars was shot in the Rio Puerco Valley around Cabezon,and in a Santa Fe warehouse. The story is about drought, a collision of cultures and hope: without water, a Native American grandmother lives alone in the desert. Her half-Mexican grandson is caught between worlds. A white down-on-his-luck magician from Los Angeles finds himself lost at her door.

The film features Fannie Loretto of Jemez Pueblo in the role of Mabel, the grandmother, and Jesus Mayorga of Albuquerque in the role of Third, her grandson. Almost the entire crew were New Mexicans, including the line producer, production designer, composer, editor and the VFX team.

John Perkins, founder of Dream Change calls She Sings to the Stars "a break-through film that blazes a new trail into the forests of consciousness." The film raises enduring questions, yet touches on the zeitgeist when it comes to the current ecological crises of the planet and the human spirit, asking: What exactly is 'reality'? What is 'magic'? And who are the real magicians?

Ira Jaffe, founder and former Chair of the Cinematic Arts Department at the University of New Mexico and author of ‘Slow Movies: Countering the Cinema of Action,’ writes: “Jennifer Corcoran’s She Sings to the Stars tells an uncommon motion picture story. In this film, events occur slowly and with deliberation, giving the spectator time to consider their meaning in relation to human identity, the desert and sky, day and night, past and future. See She Sings to the Stars to learn more about the rain and hope."

Described as "a film to be experienced", She Sings to the Stars takes time so viewers have to make the decision to be a part of it. Actor Sam Waterston observes: "It's not an ordinary look at the world - you will find the images and the vision coming back to mind long after you've finished watching. Watch it on the biggest screen you can get at: in this movie, the size of the night sky matters."

She Sings to the Stars is the directorial debut of Jennifer Corcoran, a film she wrote and directed. Recalls Ms. Corcoran, “I first met Mabel - the grandmother character in the film - in a dream.” Mabel said, ‘It's time to sing the song. Listen. It will take you four years.’ I followed the clues, constructed three life-size, newspaper-stuffed dressed figures of the characters and listened to them whisper the bones of the story.”

“The 21st Century finds us parched and hurried; we have commodified nature with little awareness of our vital symbiosis. We seem thirsty for connection, for meaning, wearied by worn concepts and the (persistent) promise of that other dream, ʻthe American dream.ʼ Mabel is not in a hurry; as a grandmother, she is a container, the keeper of timelessness reflected by an expansive desert, an endless night sky.

Little seems to happen in her world, yet in this container of timelessness - now, and only now - anything is possible.”