Shenny De Los Angeles & Maria Marrone | USA | 2020
14 min | Partial Subtitles

Three generations of Dominican women explore their relationship to relaxing their hair. By conjuring the magic of water and the power of her ancestors, a daughter uses spoken word poetry as an incantation to break the generational curse that has blocked the women in her family from locating where joy lives inside the body.

The Ritual to Beauty is a mixed media piece integrating the stylization of documentary and spoken word. Inspired by Shenny’s one-woman show “What Happens to Brown Girls Who Never Learn How to Love Themselves Brown?”, this piece invites you to witness the meaning of beauty through three generations of Dominican women. The grandmother, the mother, and the daughter. In learning about the ritual to beauty that was passed down to each woman, there is a pain buried deep in the denial of their blackness. It is only through the secret voice in the water, that the daughter is able to release herself from a pain she’s been holding onto since she was born. By forgiving herself and the women before her, will she finally see just how beautiful she is when she’s free?

DIRECTORS BIO

Shenny de Los Angeles

Shenny de Los Angeles is a Dominican-American interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Shenny centralizes Black Caribbean femmes in her writing; captivating the power of their testimony. Her work has been featured at the United Nations, Latinx Playwright Circle, Bowery Poetry Club, Latina Magazine, and Refinery 29, to name a few! Currently, Shenny is an Artist in Residence at both Mabou Mines Theatre and Brooklyn Arts Exchange, where she is developing her one woman show entitled “What Happens to Brown Girls Who Never Learn How to Love Themselves Brown?” The process of working on this play soon became the inspiration for creating the short film The Ritual to Beauty. 

Maria Marrone 

Maria Marrone is a Venezuelan-born filmmaker and photographer. She received her degree in Film & Television from New York University, and has recently completed a master’s at the London School of Oriental & African Studies in Global Media and Communications. She has worked with Oscar-nominated directors Karim Amer & Jehane Noujaim, as well as with award- winning editor Keiko Deluchi. Her work has been showcased on a variety of platforms including VICE’s Creators Project and the New Latin Wave Festival in New York.