Christina Soto documents and celebrates life in various media – as a writer, a photographer, an illustrator, a filmmaker. Recently an exhibition of her photographs was featured at Juice Chemistry in West New York and she had two photographs in a group show at the William J. Brennan Courthouse, 538 Newark Ave., in Jersey City.
And on Nov. 13, her independent film Muñeca (“Doll”) was shown as part of the International Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival in New York City.
Conceived, co-written, and produced by Soto, Muñeca is a romantic comedy. “It’s about a young painter, Esteban, who receives a beautiful life-sized doll, Sonia, and she comes to life in his imagination,” said Soto. “Sonia’s ‘spirit’ teaches Esteban to face the world he once feared and her presence ultimately transforms everyone she encounters.”
The film was shot over a three-year period and completed in 2006. Soto has been showing it at film festivals and special screenings ever since.
“This festival here in New York City,” she said. “It took a long time, but it shows that dreams do come true.”
Second career
Filmmaking came late to Soto, and in a roundabout way. She studied behavioral science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and worked for the Bronx DA for 15 years as an interpreter for the grand jury. Inspired by the stories around her, she began writing crime dramas in form of screenplays.
Unable to secure funding for a full-length feature, she excerpted one of her screenplays into a compact five minutes and shot the short film Torn Loyalties for $10,000. That was in 1993.
Christina Soto began writing crime screenplays while working for the Bronx DA as an interpreter for the grand jury, before quitting her job to pursue a career in film.
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One of the films she worked on was the 1995 Dominican feature Nueba Yol. “I was hired to go to the Dominican Republic to work on that film as a script supervisor,” she said. “It was a mega hit. Everybody in the Latino community knows about that film. It opened a lot of doors for me and I got hired to work on other films.”
At the same time she was raising funds to produce her own screenplays. It was an article she read in 1997 or so during a trip to Cuba that spurred her to create Muñeca.
Collaborating with writers Romelio Rivera and Eric Velarde to help finish the script, she hired Roderick Giles to direct. “It was great feeling that after working on so many other people’s films I was able to work on my own film finally.”
“I got the best Latino actors in New York City,” she continued. “The major leads in the film, they’re the top in their game. Those are SAG [Screen Actors Guild] actors, union actors, so I signed a waiver to even work with them. One of the actresses, Tanya Cruz, she lives in North Bergen. A very talented young woman, very pretty, and a triple threat – she’s an actress, a singer, and a dancer. She’s done a lot of things, a very driven young woman.”
The film was shot entirely in Hudson County, around Soto’s longtime home of West New York. “The bulk of it was shot by the first director and we ran out of money and I had to pull it together to finish the last five days,” she said. Mario Lopez came in as second director and completed the project.
Representing West New York
Soto’s photography career started with that same fateful trip to Cuba. “I’m half Cuban and my mother’s Puerto Rican. My stepfather’s also a Cuban,” she said. Even so, “It wasn’t easy to get over there. We had to go through Mexico.”
When she got back, Soto brought her photos of the trip to the Jersey City Cultural Affairs office and they advised her to become part of the studio tour. That led to an article in the West New York Reporter, and she was on her way.
Some of Soto’s photographs she hand-colors with acrylic paints and crayons. She has won awards for her work, including a series documenting the corner outside her kitchen window, where the town installed a clock in 2004.
“It’s like they put it there just for me,” she said. “Those pictures have traveled to other states representing West New York.”
Life after Muñeca
After completing Muñeca, Soto received a grant from New Jersey City University to turn it into a play. The resulting production was staged in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York City to great acclaim. She followed that up with another, as to be yet produced, play.
“My aspiration for the future is to make another feature film,” she said. Soto has shot a number of short films, some of which are available on YouTube. She is currently shopping two feature length scripts and holding on to one she wants to produce herself because “I want to have more control over it.”
Meanwhile she continues to work independently in the film industry. “I support myself by writing for other people,” she said. “My last project was to rewrite a novel into a short screenplay. It was an award winning novel and it will go into production this year. I also freelance doing different things on different films sometimes.”
With two grown children, Soto has been married for 29 years to a former assistant DA she met in her previous career. “My husband supports me,” she said. “If I didn’t have him I’d be homeless. I’m not ashamed of it. He’s been very supportive of my projects. I am who I am because of him.”
Soto’s husband, Darryl M. Semple Esq., has worked on her films, including serving as transportation captain on Muñeca. “That’s why he’ll never work on another film with me,” Soto said with a laugh. “He had to drive everyone all over, and one day he drove to every borough in New York.”
Muñeca was shown on Nov. 13 at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. “They have different venues all in the same area,” she said. “Two theaters are in the hospital, one is the firehouse, all within walking distance. Because the festival director is Puerto Rican, that’s why she got all the venues in el barrio.”
The film will screen again at the Cuba Cultural Center in the spring.
Art Schwartz may be reached at arts@hudsonreporter.com.