photo by Renee DiPietro
The documentary was inspired by her father’s sudden death when she was 21. “While making the documentary, it took a different turn and it became a journey to find out about this man that I didn’t know,” Maria Teresa Rodriguez said Jan. 31 to her audience in the first floor lounge in the new residence hall. She was invited by Cabrini’s Spanish club to share her award winning documentary about her father’s life and death. She won first place at the Uruguay International Film Festival in 1999 and the style of her 41 minute film “From Here to There” is referred to as “powerful, beautiful, touching and lyrical.”
Maria was unaware of the many honors and achievements her father completed before she set out on her mission. It started out as her thesis while completing her masters in fine arts at Temple University, but it turned into a three-year project that she worked on step by step after graduation.
Maria’s father was from Columbia. He grew up in Bogota and later came to North America for his college education. Here, in Washington D.C., is where he graduated, met his wife Rosemary and raised his family. “He met my mom when he was a foreign graduate student at Catholic University. My mom had recently immigrated from Ireland,” Maria said.
Maria grew up in a household of two “vibrate heritages.” “I grew up in a world of Irish accents and Latin movements,” she said in the beginning of her documentary. “People thought that the two heritages were very different but in truth I see them as really similar.” Maria’s parents had strong Catholic upbringings; she believed that their strong faith was a major factor in tying her parents together.
“From here to there is just a second away,” her father told her one day, a day when he was close to passing. His voice is there, but you don’t see him. It is from a tape-recording that Maria did with him before he died. As he bounces back between communicating in Spanish and English, you feel the steady peacefulness that he was experiencing and trying to share with his daughter. The screen is unsteady but also steady as candles and light are in focus.
“I was just actually having real conversations with him,” Maria began to say to her audience but she doesn’t continue her sentence for a while. Her eyes were welling up. The documentary was completed in 1998 but the audience could see bits and pieces of it still unfolding in the present.
Amanda Campbell, senior sociology and psychology major, reflected on the film feeling a personal connection with Maria and her mission. “I thought it was moving and I could definitely related to her desire to know more about her father.”
“You could definitely tell she put a lot of emotion into it,” Jacki Armes, senior Spanish and business major, said.
Luis Alberto Rodriguez was Maria’s father. There is a close up of his eye and then the camera slowly backs away, until the rest of his body is revealed. “I knew the facts, but needed to invent a father. maybe that’s why I still speak of him in the present tense,” she said
Maria’s mom met her father in a hospital room. He was very sick and many students visited him. One night, Rosemary went with her friends from Catholic University to see the boy.
“The room was lined with students but his demeanor was so impressive,” she said. Rosemary decided the next day that she would go back to see him. He remembered her when she got there. She was shocked. There had been many people in the room the night before. He told her that he thought she was a missionary, visiting not only him but many patients. He was happy to find out that she really had come just to see him. “He was a special person,” Rosemary said.
Through writing the documentary Maria learned that her father’s mission was “to help young people.” He started a literacy program through radio to educate the local poor in Columbia. He was the first Latino to ever write such a program. He had his doctorate in economics. At the time there were only a hand few that could say the same. He was invited with other foreign students to the White House by President John F. Kennedy. The invitation was to celebrate the successfulness of foreign graduate students.
In 1988 Maria’s father died, as well as two other close family members, from a brain tumor. “They say things happen in threes,” Maria said, “In1988 I bought a new suit. I felt like I never took it off.”
Maria struggled with disappointment in not ever knowing the answers to her final questions for her father, but she ends her personal film reflecting on her father’s inspirational words. “‘Don’t resist what life gives you . accept life’s rides’.”
“From Here to There” is film that shows the world something that cannot be portrayed through writing and photographs. The combination of film and the voices of Maria, her father and family create a living film that breathes emotions, education, life and death.
“It was eye-opening,” Dan Bertram, a sophomore from Valley Forge Military Academy said. “And a different perspective of the language barrier. If a family can do it, why can’t a society?”
Her documentary is a door for people to realize what truly can be accomplished through a documentary. Maria teaches filmmaking at the University of the Arts in the media arts department. Her next project is a documentary titled “Mirror Dance.” It is a true story about two Cuban identical twins who have been separated by cultural and political environments. After 40 years of division and difference the sisters want to try to reconcile their family tension. “Mirror Dance probably won’t be done for another year and a half,” Maria said. “When it is finished it will more than likely be aired on PBS.”
Maria Teresa Rodriguez
Filmmaker
Age: 35
Originally from: D.C.
Currently : South Philly
Favorite Food: Thai food and Vietenamese food
Favorite Music: Latin music, world music and anything by Juan Luis Guerra
Favorite Writer: Edwidge Danticat
Favorite Movie: “Wings of Desire” by Wim Wenders, “Strangers in Good Company” by Cynthia Scott, and “La Vida es Silbar” (Life is to Whistle) by Fernando Perez
Wants to give to the world: I love making documentaries and exploring other people’s culture and lives. If I can get the feedback that I got tonight and make people think, then that’s what I want.
