HEARTSTORM is like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE for the soul.
"I try to write down the words our mouths couldn't keep." ~ Magdalena Sanchez Valencia in HEARTSTORM
If you need to be carried to a place possessing equal parts transcendence, thrill, poignancy, laughter, and rawness, watch HEARTSTORM as a gift to yourself.
The highly theatrical magic of the entire film co-exists with the bespoke intimacy of each open mic performer's particular spice. Akin to the Academy Award Best Picture-winner EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, HEARTSTORM takes you on a tummy-dropping sleek roller coaster that twists into a rattling, ancient, wooden emotional one, all in one groundbreaking film. It's as brazenly unique as our own human individuality, while capturing how being truly seen by others elevates everyone and everything.
Filmmakers Basco and White set up how scary it is to do something alone, all the more, when it's emotionally vulnerable and revealing. The beauty of open mics, specifically what Arianna lady Basco, affectionately known as Lady B, cultivates in Los Angeles that you too can share at, and Director Jerry White Jr. Captures, is a community where bravery is met with radical empathy and belonging.
I was with the protagonist Lucia from the opening wind chimes. Utterly remarkable in her film debut, protagonist Magdalena Sanchez Valenica stops time with her powerfully present, vulnerable, dynamite intensity, you don't want to miss a single shot of her flowering - she'll make you want to take the risks she does. From the opening sequence, her loneliness stood twin to her bravery, on her long walk of anticipation parallel to the fences she passes, while each person listed in the opening credits accompany her as language (and true to an open mic, the soundtrack is emotionally stripped down, a highlight of the film from the get go, composer Darryl J. Basco nails it!), we get a visual reminder that we are not alone when we tell a story on screen or stage or page, even if we're hurting and lonely.
An unparalleled hybrid of live theatre, spoken word and film, HEARTSTORM captures the playfulness (inviting us to join!) of pretending to be someone else. It crystalizes what art does perhaps better than anything else: enables us to walk in another human's shoes. And recognize we're not alone in this crazy endeavor called life. But it does it in a way that slams our hearts with a sledgehammer, and cradles it like a Mother, in visceral ways we won't forget.
HEARTSTORM could be called a "Congregation of Love" Or "The Empathy Album," that is what it builds and offers every viewer.
Healing can be passed down as well as trauma. White and Basco hold our hands down the path of what touching someone with love can do. One performer at a time. Especially vivid are Aleysha Wise-Hernandez's "for us, the congregation," where she declares "this poem is for the living mural, how we coruscate, how we sky," invoking sacred community, musician fuzzy do-dumm-dumming his tight, tight tune "What Happens Under the Limelight," to waggish, deliciously odd dance and rap interludes helmed by Tu Ngo (stage name MaJiK MC), Arianna lady Basco's poignantly catchy "I Still Play These Songs," reminiscent of if Ingrid Michaelson and Emily Dickinson could anachronistically write a duet, Basco extends true questions without condemnation for anyone, to Aurora Basco's original music, a performer in her teens, who evokes the next Tracy Chapman, J. S. Ondara, & Joan Armatrading, she's undeniably a rising star.
Director Jerry White Jr. (also co-writer, co-producer and open mic performer), dives deep but doesn't linger anywhere too long. Basco, White and the ensemble return us to our pure needs as tiny humans before we were pummeled, ignored, denied, before we hurt others.
If you've ever wanted to be truer to yourself, wanted to belong with less judgment, been impacted by family of origin hurt, trauma, dysfunction or addiction, HEARTSTORM is for you.
HEARTSTORM is a quest to touch our truest souls, and if we share our true soul, to have it received tenderly, joyfully, empathetically.
"It doesn't have to be a curse to feel this much all the time." ~ Magdalena Sanchez Valencia in HEARTSTORM
HEARTSTORM'S "congregation" is written on my soul's memory; I'll keep your words & story in my mouth.
