Samantha Ariel Berlanga
Director | Cinematographer | Writer
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sammyyariel@gmail.com
“Make up a story. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.” - Toni Morrison
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From a young age I was fascinated by stories and how they shaped the people around me. I came to witness how many of these stories were nuanced and filled with paradoxes. And how often a lot of us have been asked to give up or conform our stories in order to survive.
In a world consumed by apathy, shame, and fear for the sake of profit, storytelling remains a radical act of connection and tool in supplying a new world beyond survival. Not the new world of the colonizer west, where innovation and progress come at the expense of marginalized communities, but the new world de la gente. Where we use every shred of our dignity, fortitude, and ancestors call from the mountains to tell our stories with pride. Because we know that even when they are whispered they are revolutionary.
As a mixed media artist, filmmaker and writer, these truths have always been a pillar in how I choose to create and share my work. I seek to expose the connections between our lived experiences and the institutions that dominate. Emphasizing that agency is a vital part of liberating all our stories.
You’ll find that my repertoire of work combines a mixture of mediums from analog to digital animation. Telling stories from the comedic to the poetic all the while making the most of the resources accessible to me. I hope it will bring us a semblance of more love, more peace, more truth and pleasure in this forever chaotic world.
Samantha Berlanga is a Puerto Rican–Ecuadorian American writer, director, and cinematographer from Queens, New York. She is currently based in San Francisco, where she is a BAVC Media Maker fellow, second-year SFFILM artist in residence,youth mentor and SFAC Artist Impact Endowment Grant Recipient. She is developing her debut feature documentary, Pleasure Seekers, an intergenerational portrait of women reclaiming pleasure, agency, and connection in defiance of cultural repression.
A graduate of the University of San Francisco with a B.A. in Media Studies, Berlanga has directed narrative, experimental, and documentary shorts, with work featured in local and international film festivals as well as Drawing Room SF’s Women Rising Gallery and Women Voices Now online platform. Grounded in community care, her practice centers on building bridges across Latine, queer, and BIPOC diasporas through mutual aid and art-based fundraisers.
Press
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