Marcela

Marcela is an autobiographical and auto ethnographic documentary film that uses personal archival VHS footage and interviews with the subject’s family members to explore the main question at the center of the film: After many years of ballet practice, why did Dina quit ballet as a young girl? In revisiting this event from the past, the viewer is taken on a journey in exploring the environment she grew up in that led to that decision. In searching for the answer and in learning about the internalized racial trauma passed on through her father, an unexpected revelation becomes the main takeaway of this film. Marcela is a reflexive meditation that reveals more than the subject had initially asked for. Dina’s multiracial and Third Culture Child identity become part of a more complex narrative in which the subject becomes aware that half of their identity got lost in a hostile and racist environment.