On the Difference Between Dream and Memory
by Helen Peña
“My great-grandmama told my grandma the part she lived through and my grandma told my mama what they both didn’t live through and my mama told me.” - Gayl Jones, Corregidora
“And then I knowed about what she remembered.” - Lucille Cilfton, Generations
An ongoing mantra, intention, and manifesto opens my film, Crossed Veins: “I am searching for the women inside me, the secrets they held close.” This search is driven by my spiritual practice and an innate desire to remember the very simple fact that I am not alone, as much as our oppressors like to make us think we are. Our ancestors are there, behind each shoulder watching over us. I try to remember this every time I feel despair, grief, and anxiety, which is often these days, given the state of the world and how our communities are directly being impacted.
In Crossed Veins, I chose to confront my deepest wound: my tense, weighted relationship to my Christian mother and her disdain for my gender, sexuality and religion as a queer non-binary person who practices Santeria. As I began pre-production, I asked myself: how can I make a film that becomes an extension of my spiritual practice? How can this film help me heal through my deepest wounds? If it can heal me, does it have the capacity to heal others? The film became a way for me to stop running away from the hurt, to let it take up space, let the feelings surface and flow through me. The answers began to reveal themselves in the making.
The tactile called me in, as my hands needed to be put to work in order to move through what was surfacing. So I spent the summer immersed in the world of experimental film, cyanotype printing, collaging, searching for family archival material, journaling, shooting super8 film, re-enacting dreams and stories my grandmother told me, digitizing old family camcorder footage. I couldn’t deconstruct the relationship between me and my mother without diving into the world that shaped her. Childhood memories seeped into my subconscious and bled into my dreams, to the point where it was hard to tell them apart. I would often ask myself, did I dream that or am I just remembering something? I let the ancestors speak through me, and, in the film, even I become a ghost of myself, a mere object of light and shadow, because I am no longer the person I was in that image, I have already aged past it. The screen becomes the crossroads, as experimental filmmaker Maya Deren says, a meeting place with the metaphysical.
Taking place across the Dominican Republic, where my mother is from, and Miami, where she migrated to and raised me, Crossed Veins is also a film about migration, diaspora, the Atlantic ocean and the history that lies there. The Atlantic is what separates (or unites) the two lands. She becomes a character of her own, flowing into the form and material of the film itself.
I could go on forever about the journey, because it was a special one, but what I find more useful is sharing some of what I learned, and what the process looked like for me.
Tips for spirit-led, surrealist personal filmmaking:
Always keep a journal for your musings, don’t filter yourself as you write. When feeling called or inspired. Try automatic writing in it.
Keep a separate dream journal. It can be an iphone note, a voice recording, a physical journal, as long as it's a place you can count on that’s easy and reliable for you so that you can be consistent in your documentation. Write anything down, the first thing that comes to mind when you wake up, even if it sounds crazy. If you struggle with your dreams: pray about it, keep a cup of water by your bed, or work with herbs like blue lotus to help you remember.
Ancestor altar building & meditating. Don’t just build a pretty altar, make sure it’s useful to you, activate it, pray there, meditate there, even when you’re not sure if they’re listening (they always are),
Spend intentional time alone so you can hear your own thoughts.
When the shadow work becomes heavy, consider moving energy through your body in a way that feels good for you. I chose acupuncture, for you it may be reiki, tai chi, yoga, running, weight lifting etc.
Helen Peña is a 2024 Resisting Narratives of Erasure fellow.