Palmas (2024): a documentary short about Los Angeles

 The rewards of toiling in the teaching trenches for many years sometimes appear in unexpected ways. Such was the case of Aric Lopez, a CSUN student who took two of my classes during the fateful pandemic season. I wrote a letter of recommendation for USC in Fall 2021, but lost track of his endeavors.   

Fast forward to this email from December 13, 2024: "I feel that this film might resonate with you, as I took inspiration from some of the filmmakers you focused on in class such as Agnès Varda and Patricia Cardoso. I'm very proud of it, and I think the influence of attending a school like CSUN helped shape this documentary and its particular lens on Los Angeles. Lastly, you wrote my letter of recommendation to USC, so I hope this film is evidence that I have fulfilled the promise of your recommendation".

I wrote a review of his beautiful short Palmas, as if I had pre-screened it for a festival. Here it is, hoping that this work of love finds an audience.

"USC graduate film student Aric Lopez has made a very polished autobiographical essay using palm trees, non-native plants in Southern California, to interrogate his own life and roots in Los Angeles. 

 
It is an impressive film in its technical aspects, notably camera work, sound design and music, showcasing extensive research in local archives.  It is divided in three blocks by simple, elegant and expressive black and white drawings: “The Transplant Tree”, “The Three Communities” and “Native Angelenos”.
 
Interestingly, Palmas struggles to overcome a storytelling dilemma, the result, I think, of a strong drive to make a longer film, wishing to encompass other subjects to bring a larger picture of life in Los Angeles.  The palm tree is a metaphor for the director’s self in the first seven minutes, with footage of various species intercut with interviews about the history and meaning of the botanically named "arecaceae",  integral to the familiar and mythical landscape of the city. A story of invasion, if I may.

The short then takes takes a surprising turn into chapters of LA history – the building of Dodger Stadium and the Spanish missions  – to connect this foreign species with the natives and Hispanics, seen as firmly implanted in its geography. These communities are the natives displaced by waves of English speakers. 

Thus, the native/non-native equation described in the first block is upended in the second and third, where the resilience of Indians and Spanish-speakers is as tenacious as the acclimated and tough palm trees. The displacement of the Mexican Americans of Chavez Ravine and Gabrieleño-Tongva Indian tribe in the San Gabriel Mission, as told to the camera by their modern-day descendants and archival materials, is the subject of the longer documentary pushing to be born from Aric Lopez' creative vision.
 

The writer/director’s rootedness in Los Angeles, described as the interplay between the outside and the inside, with the palm tree as a metaphor for both, is reaffirmed at the end of the film. Closing with a lovely shot of three tall palm trees blowing against a blue sky, the writer/director softly concludes that he now understands his rootedness in the hidden history of displaced Angelenos. The paradox of Los Angeles has been captured in a poetic manner".