On Friday, May 8th, I screened my senior thesis film Regreso at Wesleyan’s Goldmith Family Cinema. I saw this project as the culmination of not only my Film Studies Major, but also my Global Engagement Minor and Global Middle East and North African Studies Minor. For this reason, it wasn’t enough for me to create a story that didn’t touch or reflect on my two minors. Generally, I created the short as a reflection on my moving away from Puerto Rico to Arkansas at a very young age, and the contradicting feeling of genuinely loving Arkansas but never quite feeling completely at home there. There’s more nuance, but I don’t want to say too much. Being relatively recently completed, I still don’t fully have the distance to talk about it in a very eloquent way, so I leave this post with my film, followed by a list of references or direct inspirations. The ideas I talk about in my references may not fully come out as intended in the film, but that’s okay – I have room to improve. I hope you enjoy.

  1. “La vida es un sueño” – Spanish poem by Pedro Calderón De La Barca, included to set the tone of a dream-like viewing experience. Double-edged sword of dreams being pretty but not real, similar to how the forest is pretty, but it’s not where Ivy belongs. Personally, to highlight how inspired I’ve been by Spanish art, photography, and cinema over the years in classes like Image/Word and History of Spanish Cinema. Also to establish the older, wiser character of Roy, whose voice comes back later in the film, played by my grandfather, José Antonio Pagán.
  2. Date written – May 15th, 2026 is my other grandpa, Joe De Jesús’s birthday.
  3. Fractal nature of photography. There is a connection between photography and memory that I wanted to explore here, greatly inspired by Image/Word. There’s a sense of nostalgia attached to photo and memory, but it seems like both of these things have a way of corroding the event photographed or remembered. Every time you remember something it’s a little different from how it actually happened, and the more time one has with a photo, the more context and perspective one consciously or subconsciously places upon it.
  4. “Ya habibi” from Umm Kulthum’s classic song “Alf Leila wa Leila”, instantly recognizable by any Egyptian viewer as a sign of heritage and pop culture.
  5. The very concept of shooting in the forest is something I owe conceptually to Arkansas and practically to my experiences in the rainforest during my time with Iracambi. To me, the forest represents the wonderful and magical trails and state parks in Arkansas while my experience and practice filming countless videos in crazy hikes and physically uncomfortable situations in the Atlantic Rainforest gave me the confidence to think I could film in the middle of the woods.
  6. The main character is named Ivy, after my grandmother.
  7. The alchemist character is played by a Venezuelan actress and close friend, who says “ya va”, a typical Venezuelan expression that means “give me a second”. I didn’t want to translate it in the subtitles because the Venezuelan-ness of it is lost in translation. She wears an Egyptian keffiyeh I bought at the Pyramids and she sings an Umm Kulthum song. She understands English and speaks Spanish and Arabic. I placed her in this moment to represent another traveler who drifts in and out of different cultures and places and has some insight that could help Ivy.
  8. The very notion of the alchemist is, in part, inspired by Brazilian author Coelho, who writes about an Alchemist who finds treasure at the Pyramids of Giza.
  9. “I understand a bit”. There are so many Puerto Ricans and latinos I’ve met throughout my life that have either forgotten or haven’t learned to speak Spanish, but they “understand a bit”.
  10. The symbol on the coffee cup is the “Sol de Otoao”, a Taino symbol on the flag of Utuado, Puerto Rico, where my grandparents live. The best coffee in the world is from Utuado.
  11. Sound effect from the song “Agosto” by Bad Bunny
  12. “Ea rayetes” is a Puerto Rican phrase meaning “Oh my goodness”
  13. “The hardest part of ending is starting again” taken directly from the song “Waiting For The End” by Linkin Park. I love Linkin Park.
  14. Ismael – an obvious and slightly awkward reference. He’s not a terrible guy but he doesn’t quite fit in anywhere and tries to make up for it by keeping Ivy in the forest with him. Neither his Arabic nor his Spanish accents sound native.
  15. The girl in pink frame is a reference to Salvador Dalí’s painting, Young Woman at the Window. It was one of the first images I had in mind when writing my thesis.
  16. Gulls and waves sound effects from the song “Muerte en Hawaii” by Calle 13.
  17. Ivy’s wardrobe changes from dark blue and red at the beginning to light blue, white and red, pointing to a shift between the colors of the Americanized Puerto Rican flag to the Puerto Rican flag.
  18. I always wanted this movie to end at a salsa dance party on the beach.
  19. “Callaíta” by Bad Bunny is an extremely nostalgic song for me. I was in. Puerto Rico over the summer in 2019 when this song was at the height of it’s popularity and it reminds me of driving around with my grandparents (José Antonio Pagán and Sylvia Castrillón) and cousins through San Juan and to different restaurants and beaches. Years later, I saw Bad Bunny perform this live in Puerto Rico in El Choliseo with my aunt and uncle. I will never forget the entire stadium singing the bridge near the back-end of the song “Alócate y hazte mía, que la noche lo pidió, el destino lo decidió”. I didn’t know that people knew the words to what I thought was just another element to Callaíta. When I asked my uncle, he told me it was a direct sample from Zion’s “Alócate” a classic 2000s reggeatón track, put over a nostalgic filter in Bad Bunny’s song to make it sound distant. I wanted to highlight this particular segment of “Alócate/Callaíta” because I do believe music has the capacity to bridge space and time, which I wrote about in my Spanish Cinema class final. This ending was my rendition of that, covering the musical decades of Puerto Rico from salsa to 2000s reggaetón to our biggest artist currently. It bridges times in Puerto Rican music and times in my personal life.
  20. The end credits over the house my grandfather built, where he lives with my grandmother (Joe De Jesús and Ivette Rullan)