Ode to Pablo

GALLERY

ABOUT THE FILM

Writer/Director: Adelina Anthony

Genre: Digital Short

Program Length: 10 mins

Premiere Date: July 15, 2019 on the PBS Online Film Festival

Challenged to a basketball game by local boys, Pablo, a queer, deaf Latino, agrees to play. He does not reveal much about himself, but let’s his basketball skill speak for itself. He’s enjoying the game when an unexpected incident makes it clear to the other teens that Pablo is deaf. Despite assumptions about each and however brief, Pablo makes a connection with one of the boys.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Adelina Anthony (Writer/Director)

Adelina Anthony is an acclaimed Two Spirit, Xicana, lesbian artist. In 2012, she and Marisa Becerra co-founded AdeRisa Productions. Their first short film, Forgiving Heart, premiered at the 2013 Outfest Fusion Film Festival. That same year she participated in Film Independent’s Project Involve (PI) and was awarded the Sony Pictures Diversity Fellowship.  Her second short screenplay, You’re Dead to Me was produced by a Film Independent PI cohort and the National Minority Consortium; and was winner of the 2014 Imagen Award. Her third short screenplay, Get the Life, produced by another PI cohort in 2016, was nominated for the Iris Prize. She is a two-time awardee of the Latino Public Broadcasting Public Media Content Fund, including for Amigas with Benefits—the 2017 Imagen Award Winner for best short film. Currently, Adelina has two short films she directed on the 2019 film festival circuit:  Guarding Santos (written by Marisa Becerra) and La Serenata (written by Ernesto J. Martínez).

“This film came in part through my own growth and awareness of the incredible vibrancy and resilience of the queer, deaf Latinx community. As a work, this short film aims to provide a means for encouraging more awareness about these communities and to encourage more support of deaf actors of color in film, especially when roles are written for them. Our ASL team, especially Julia Dominguez, made this film possible through rehearsals, production and post-production.”