Remedios
17 Minute Short Film
Drama | SciFi | Dark Comedy
After a brain transplant, Remedios struggles to redefine her identity in a male body. When she finds her former body standing in the attic, alive and healthy albeit vacant of mind, it thrusts her meddling family into chaos over what she should do with it, a discussion that traverses a depth of notions regarding our sense of who we are, or what is ``I.``
Dealing with Margo, the theater group’s volatile director, is always challenging but it’s critically so when Marlie has to tell her that the main electrical panel for the theater has collapsed and she had to call the only electrician who could fix the archaic apparatus: Margo’s ex-husband, Frank. Margo would rather set the stage on fire than have Frank return to that building.
Imagine having to tell an aging, sensitive and melancholic star like Karilda that her very last performance after a long and highly acclaimed career may never see the curtain rise and if it did, it would reveal an unlit stage. All while dealing with the fascinating young star, the new sensation, the drunken trainwreck: Eva. How could Marlie make them see that she’s ready for the spotlight if she can’t even succeed at her current meager occupation?
Director Statement
My aim is to make films that help cultivate a harmonious psyche. Remedios is my first opportunity to work on a science fiction short, although the textures and tones of the film are hardly what one would expect from the genre. Science fiction felt appropriate for the subject matter Patricia Hechavarria (co-writer) and I wanted to explore because it gave us the freedom to take a subtle observation and put it under a magnifying glass. Remedios's premise allowed us to dissect the often conflicted duality between our biological urges- instinct and impulses- and our cognitive wishes- our will- and shine a light on the notion that their particular balance is obviously what conditions our sense of identity.
There was a conscious effort to keep the tone of the film on the comedic side, even if the result borders on unsettling, because I believe comedy is a cushion for ideas that can be otherwise off-putting. The idea for black and white came like an intuition during my first scout of the Redland Farms where we filmed, a 100 year old gem in the still rural part of South Florida, and Hector David Rosales (co-cinematographer) and I settled on it because we thought it would emphasize the surreal aspects of the text. The film is bilingual (English and Spanish) which is authentic to our personal experience within our own families and once again representative of this sense of duality conflicting the protagonist. The whole short film is inside a single wooden house, a common archetype in Jungian psychology that is present in dreams when we are “searching within our psyche;” which makes the attic theme obvious.
Randy Valdes
