Despite the wide range of topics shorts directors Verónica Echegui, Vanessa Beletic, Brianna Devons and actor Lamar Usher bring to the table through stories of dance, resilience and acting, the group shares a common goal of breaking tired Hollywood clichés by adding voices of authenticity to the existing narratives.
“Hollywood has done a great disservice to the Haitian community,” Beletic told TheWrap during the “Live Action Shorts Showcase” for the 2022-2023 Awards Season Screening Series. “Anytime Haiti comes up in any conversation, when it comes to cinema, we think of voodoo, which has been co opted and used and bastardized and turned into something that’s like, demonic and scary. I’m not an expert in that space, but I do feel a sense of responsibility to help destigmatize my people in any way that I can.”
While Beletic’s “Catching Spirits” focuses on the story of a young girl who was told she would have seizures when she dances while a supernatural element is at play, Devons’ “On the Line” spotlights resiliency through trauma when an actor has a career-launching audition and suddenly gets a call that his brother might have committed suicide.
In addition to the layers of emotion within “On the Line,” the film also showcases a more complex character of what Usher, who plays the lead, calls a “thug,” marking a stark contrast to the one-dimensional roles in which Usher is usually cast.
“I never really had the opportunity to showcase my range,” Usher told TheWrap. “We made a point to make it a thug role, but still have the ability to showcase the different range that I can use or go to.”
“He’s an amazing actor, but he keeps getting casted as a thug and criminal for like CBS and ABC,” Devons added. “We wanted to comment on Hollywood of how it can be seen as this huge opportunity, but it’s still heavily rooted in being typecasted.”
Echegui’s short “Tótem Loba” centers on a young girl who gets wrapped into a dangerous ancient tradition where men dress up as wolves and embrace violence — a traumatic experience she felt first-hand. In calling out the hyper normalization of violence and misogyny rooted in the practice, she also contributed to what she sees as a lack of female voices in the film industry.
“We’re getting more and more women, directors, women script writers, and we have the topics on the table,” Echegui told TheWrap. “We’re more aware of how women … [are] always playing the same kind of roles and, we’re hearing more and more voices in my country telling stories like mine, that are real and coming from a real background.”
