Jersey City native Erick W. Zurita, 23, likes thinking critically about the Latino experience in the United States.
Although the recent New Jersey City University graduate, whose family hails from the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, was born in the U.S. and has lived here all his life, he still thinks the contrast between the ideals and realities of Latino life in America are powerful enough to resonate with him.
So now he’s making movies about it. And people are taking notice.
His film "Morir Sonando," which he completed as a university project in 2001, is being screened Thursday at the New York Film and Video Festival, a juried series of events showcasing the work of underground, low-budget and non-mainstream artists.
Zurita’s 10-minute short, which was shot in Greenville over a weekend in the autumn of 2001, examines how television and mass media shape Latino consciousness in America today.
"I like to look at how we’re affected by the [immigrant experience]," Zurita said last week. "I like to examine how we, psychologically, have adapted and what we value and what we throw away."
The story of "Morir Sonando" – which loosely translates to "Dying While Dreaming" – looks at 16 year-old Xavier, a Hispanic-American kid living in Anytown, U.S.A., as he struggles with the reality of his existence versus the way he imagines it should be.
This ideal universe, played out in Xavier’s dreams, begins to get more and more appealing as the burden of the real world begins to bear down on him.
The conflict in Xavier’s mind continues to escalate, until one climactic experience forces him to make a decision as to where he’d rather be – in the real world, where joy and pleasure coexist with pain and suffering; or within the interstitial space of the sweet, comfortable realm of his dreams, where conflict is virtually non-existent.
Shot in black-and-white 16mm film and then transferred to video, the film uses dialogue in both Spanish and English. Xavier’s dreams are the filter through which the audience sees its main characters. With a cast of seven actors that Zurita culled through both casting calls and friends’ favors, Zurita produced the film at a cost of just over $1,000.
Coffeehouse connections
Zurita, who currently works part-time as a production assistant for filmmakers in New York, also makes ends meet by working shifts at coffeehouses in Jersey City and Hoboken. He now works some shifts at Hamilton Park’s Basic coffee shop, where flyers advertising his screening are pasted onto the windows.
But it was his time as a barista at the Starbucks in Hoboken’s Shipyard that proved especially fruitful for Zurita. Through working there, he was able to meet two people that would play a creative role in his aspirations to become a filmmaker.
The first contact was Ogden Avenue resident Brandon Burns, an Oregon transplant who helped Zurita pen the script for "Morir Sonando." Burns, who still works at the Shipyard Starbucks, shares a writing credit on the film.
The second contact for Zurita was the Venezuelan filmmaker for whom he now works in New York. After hitting it off after she stopped at the Hoboken café some time ago, the two kept in contact and are resuming a professional relationship.
All this, Zurita says, is his way of working his way to making film his career. A good deal of getting to that point, however, is sometimes working for nothing in order to make the right connections. That aspect of the job, he says, was a point of contention between his own aspirations and his family’s strong work ethic.
"My family finds it really hard that I’m working for free sometimes," Zurita said. "When I first started out, my mother didn’t take me seriously. But when she walked into production once, she realized how much work went into it."
He now has his family’s support, and Zurita hopes to work with other Latino filmmakers in the future. The emphasis on Latino issues, he says, is something he doesn’t feel will go away any time soon.
"I definitely see it as something I focus on constantly," Zurita said.
A voracious news hound with an eye for Latino issues, Zurita says he looks at current events and incorporates them into his work. He’s also an avid viewer of cinema from Latin and South America, and he points to recent work by Brazilian filmmakers as a decidedly strong influence. He also names writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez as providing him with the conceptual vocabulary he tends to use in his own work.
Jersey City roots
Born in Jersey City, Zurita lived near the corner of Sixth and Coles streets during his childhood. After having attended School 5 and McNair Academic High School, Zurita went to Southampton College, an arm of Long Island University. He said he didn’t take well to that campus environment, so he transferred to NJCU and stayed there to finish his degree in Media Arts.
His postivie experience working under NJCU Media Arts department chair Roddy Bogawa wasn’t the only supporting factor that led him to choose a career in cinema. His extensive experience in Jersey City was also a factor because of his hometown’s proximity to New York, often seen as one of the world’s creative capitals.
"Being so close to New York, I thought, ‘Why not take advantage of it?’" Zurita said.
After having graduated in May, Zurita began working on his own projects and stacking up his resume with work for other filmmakers. He still works part-time at Jersey City’s Basic.
He’s currently revising a screenplay about a young woman who, like Xavier from "Morir Sonando," is caught between two worlds. The character, who is the primary caretaker for an ailing, aging parent, is struggling with the clash between her duties and the emergence of her own adulthood.
"Morir Sonando" screens at 10 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, at screen six of Village East Cinema, located at 181 Second Avenue at 12th Street. Visit www.nyfilmvideo.com for more information. q