GERO ARTE was filmed in Northern Spain. The story was inspired by a memory of my beloved friend when I was twelve years old and living in Gernika. My friend, (RIP), was one of the most loving, caring, funny, giving, beautiful girls I've ever known, and her mother was a young hard working woman. She cleaned apartments, and did what ever it took to care for her children, and put food on the table. My friend's father was away in the USA, working as a sheep herder, to send money back home. But as time passed, it became clear that this man had no intention of returning to his family. Later I found out that he had become very successful, and had begun a new family in America, abandoning completely his Basque family. These sad circumstances inpired me to write GERO ARTE, to honor my friend, and to re-imagine in a more positive scenario the relationship between two half siblings meeting for the first time, after the parent's death.
GERO ARTE, 15 min., shot on Cannon 7D in English with some subtitled, Spanish and Euskera. Written by Begonya Plaza, Directed by Nahuel Losada, Starring: Ainhoa Aierbe, Patxi Barco, & Begonya Plaza; Camera: Alain Consonni, Sound: Jon Fika, Art Direction: Antonio Galvez, Editing: Taji Ameen, Music: Kepa Junkera. Produced by: Izar Productions, CreAv, and Nahuel Losada, all rights reserved, March 13, 2014.
-51:50 (a mitad del programa segunda hora)
October 16, 2013
Tuve el gran placer de ser entrevistada por Felix y Kike IFlandia Radio Euskadi. Es un programa divertido, interesante sobre cultura y arte. Para todos los de habla hispana les recomiendo descargar sus podcasts.
and on October 15, 2013
"Do the Blind Dream?" by Barry Gifford
A private reading by the theater group BLACK LODGE THEATER, directed by Alexandra Siladi
The play takes place in Fùlmine, a small town close to the sea in the south of Italy. Beatrice, a woman in her seventies, has just died, and her children are gathering to attend her funeral. Aldo, Beatrice's son, and Sandra, her eldest daughter, arrive at the house of "Aunt" Rosa, their mother's caregiver in her last years——Beatrice suffered from Alzheimer's disease——with their respective spouses, Giuliana and Ignazio. Cara, Beatrice's younger daughter, a famous actress, arrives with her American boyfriend, Buddy. The family, along with Aunt Rosa and two men from the funeral home, and later, a Priest, constitute the main cast.
"Do the Blind Dream?" is a title built on double entendre: Does anyone, sighted or not, see the truth of daily events? To paraphrase the poet Delmore Schwartz, in dreams reside responsibilities.
As the action proceeds we become acquainted with the jealousies, rivalries and secrets concerning the immediate family and the (mostly——as well as ghostly) absent father and husband. As everyone talks we begin to discern how and why they lie——not only to each other but to themselves. The only person among them who retains a true sense of her self, as well as a measure of elegance, is Beatrice, the dead woman, who in life did not speak a coherent sentence in her final years. Here, however, she is free to talk, liberated in death as she was imprisoned in life by convention, a bad marriage and, finally, illness.
Also at issue here is the recurrent clash between generations, the traditional and the new; between a burned out culture struggling to be reborn and an often vulgar contemporary one. Cara, despite the serious differences between her and Beatrice, emerges as the one among the children to best represent the values and spirit of their mother. As the family members wrangle, recriminate and stumble toward rapprochement, Buddy, the "visitor from another planet" as one character describes him, is able to pick up and follow the thread of truth as it unravels. And, of course, it is left for Beatrice to have the last word.
As Mariela Castro Espín, in the premiere of Eduardo Machado's new play, “MARIQUITAS” directed by Michael Domitrovich.
Photography by Sion Fullana
- Produced by Theatre for the New City/Crystal Field.
- Runs Saturday, April 27, 2013 through Sunday, May 19, 2013.
MARIQUITAS is set in a gay-friendly bed and breakfast in Old Havana, Mariquitas focuses on a group of Cuban jineteros (hustlers) and their older European clients as they satisfy the desires of their bodies, minds, and souls in a country with limited resources. In the last 5 years, LGBT Cubans have experienced unprecedented freedom of expression due to the support of sexologist, psychologist, and politician Mariela Castro Espin. Still, the country’s history of marginalizing, persecuting and interning homosexuals makes faith in this new period of growth tentative at best. Mariquitas uses the struggles of a specific slice of contemporary Cuban life to illuminate a larger historical dynamic – the continued tradition of cultural and sexual imperialism between Cuba and its former colonizers.
CLICK ON PHOTOS:
The cast includes Omar Chagall, Matthew d'Amato, Ricardo Dávila, Oscar Hernandez, Liam Torres, Ed Trucco, Carlos Valencia Ana Valle, and Begonya Plaza as Mariela Castro Espin. Set design by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams, lighting design by Alex Bartenieff, costume design by Michael Bevins, sound design by Betsy Rhodes, production stage manager Michael Alifanz.
ALSO:
The release of my play, “TERESA'S ECSTASY” published by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., a year after its Off-Broadway premiere at the historical Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City.
Lucky for me, the tremendous daughter is all grown up, doing her junior semester abroad, in Germany, on full scholarship! So proud.
WEB PILOT, “Cookie” by Denise Doyle Chambers and directed by Neil Turitz is a very funny episode filmed recently in Devon, Pennsylvania, with my dear "Teresa’s Ecstasy" co-star, Linda Larkin and other talented, comedic actors. Will keep you posted on web air dates.
VIDEO, "AMERICAN HERO" with James A. Lee and Begonya Plaza A few years ago, I made the most poetic short film, "American Hero". It was moving not only in subject matter, but also in the way it treated the creative process, employing young passionate film students, including my daughter, Cat, with a beautiful score by Lev 'Ljova (a.k.a. Barmaljova) Music Performed by Inna Barmash & Ljova. I loved working on that meditation on war and love piece. The film is currently airing on SHORTS INTERNATIONAL. Watch "American Hero" on YouTube: AMERICAN HERO
I hope to see you at the upcoming show of MARIQUITAS! Thank you as always for your support! Please keep in touch.
Salud, Begonya
Begonya Plaza is among other things a Spanish American performing artist/writer/multi media film maker. At age nine, Plaza starred in the independent Hollywood film, Big Sister, and then spent the remainder of her formative years between Bogotá, Colombia (her mother’s birth place) and Gernika, Spain (her father’s), until returning to Los Angeles where she graduated from John Marshall High and after attending two years at Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy, director Walter Hill cast her in 48 HRS. Begonya continued perfecting her acting skills with Eric Morris, Rachel Rosenthal and John Lehne, in Los Angeles, and with Bill Hickey, Uta Hagen, Geraldine Page and ultimately her long-time mentor, Michael Howard, in New York. Between playing featured and leading parts in films by Oliver Stone, Amy Jones, Tim Hunter, Clint Eastwood, Michael Mann, and others, she participated in screenwriting workshops with Syd Field, Robert McKee or summer creative writing courses at NYU. Begonya has acted opposite Robert De Niro, Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Klaus Kinski, Roddy McDowall, Caroll O’Connor and starred in the CBS television series DARK JUSTICE, shot in Barcelona where Ms. Plaza and Catalán artist, Xano Armenter had a daughter.
Besides TERESA'S ECSTASY Off-Broadway at Cherry Lane Theatre in March of 2012, other stage acting credits include originating roles in MARIQUITAS by Eduardo Machado, IN ARABIA WE’D ALL BE KINGS by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman at The Labyrinth Theatre Company; Austrian director Kurt Palm’s one-woman show of erotic songs and poems by Bertolt Brecht at New York’s avant garde, Gas Station, OLD FRIENDS by Martin Zurla at Beverly Hills Playhouse, and Garcia Lorca’s YERMA at Ensemble Studio West, under Moscow Art Theatre director,Yevgeny Lanskoy.
Writing credits include the screenplay, PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY, a one year fictionalized account of a beautiful young Mexican aspiring dancer who falls prey to the Dalí’s seductions while taken for the ride of his life. The stage plays; TERESA'S ECSTASY, A LUCID DREAM in which historical characters Evita Perón, Simón Bolivar, Dolores Ibárruri, and Antonio Machín discuss their past lives with God, in front of a live audience, and THE BRISKET BRIGADE, about romance in old age. SOUVENIR VIEWS, a 24-minute documentary about New York’s 9/11 tragedy that premiered at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival, and aired nationally on the Independent Film Channel; AMERICAN HERO, a 15- minute short film that contemplates the ravages of war as an Iraqi veteran returns home, distributed by Shorts International; and GERNIKA LIVES, a personal documentary narrated by John Randolph that explores Ms. Plaza’s Basque heritage and the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Begonya Plaza has also been commissioned to write screenplays in English and Spanish as a ghost writer.
"Writing is a synthesis between self and others, the objective medium taking flight into the unconscious."
Photograph by Xanthe Elbrick Agent Contact:
You can contact Begonya at: begonya@begonyaplaza.com
Still photo, AMERICAN HERO , by Caterina Armenter, 2010
"Exposing our vulnerability is the path to truth and understanding."
GERNIKA LIVES (a documentary about the bombing of Gernika)
Written, and directed by Begonya Plaza
It is the 50th Anniversary of the bombing of Gernika. Gernika was the first innocent town to be air bombed by Hitler, with the encouragement of Franco and his fascist regime. In this film, my father reunites with childhood friends, and family. Amongst them are renowned Basque artists like Jose Luis Iriondo, Olaeta Ballet, Mauri Ugartemendia (one of history's greatest Spanish futbol players), Gernika's mayor, other politicians, educators, athletes, and the town's civilians who were barely children when the devastation began. They recount that horrific day, which was on a Monday, it was market day in Gernika, when the surrounding towns come to gather and sell their produce, and celebrate their culture and unique tradition.
Starring: John Randolph, & renown Basque writer/historian, Mario de Salegi.
Spanish, and Euskera with English Voice-Over & subtitles. 45-minute video.
I Filmed in 1987 before any other film was made of its kind, and later again in 2000 when I met writer, historian, Mario de Salegi, at his home in New York City, I added footage of him candidly speaking about the Spanish Civil War, and the comparisons with our escalating current world crisis.
It is through these proud, hard working, and authentic people that we learn about their culture, rich history of independence, and democracy, a language that is rooted in their land, and the consistent violence from outside trying to exploit the most fertile of lands between Norther Spain and Southern France.
The film is narrated, and introduced by John Randolph, from his dressing room on the Broadway stage while doing "Broadway Bound" for which he won the Tony that year.
Now most of these characters have died, but GERNIKA LIVES, stands witness to its history. You will be given a tour of Gernika, 1987, with all its symbolism, political parliament, sacred oak tree, and you will meet some of the people who survived, and lived to tell their important story.
The little town of Gernika was blazed mercilessly, killing a third of the townspeople as a pre -Spanish Civil War warning attack, aided by combined nazi - fascist allied forces on the side of Franco. This was the first ever air raid, and the initial test ground for the Nazi new technology and strategy called blitzkrieg, where large masses of innocent civilians would mercilessly be attacked from the air with falling bombs.
I was too young and didn't know what I was doing, but my passion and desire to honor my father's traumatic childhood in an attempt to help redeem the past is what carried me through. With the help of individual sponsors, from Spain and the United States, friends and family I embarked on my creative journey. Later, I brought my friend, award winning editor, Jack Tucker, to collaborate with me, and for one year in Galdakano's K200 studios, we edited the film that I and my team had shot around the 50th Anniversary commemorations.
GERNIKA LIVES aired on Euskal Televista International, screened at Anthology Film Archives, Eusko Etxea NY, was purchased by: Boise State University Library, Dartmouth College Library, private individuals and other institutions.
STARRING: John Randolph (Seconds, Serpico, Prizzi's Honor) Jesus Plaza, and Mario de Salegi.
Edited by: Jack Tucker and Begonya Plaza
This evil event prompted Picasso to paint the famous work of art, Guernica, demonstrating the defamation of outside forces on innocent village people.
The Basques are considered to be the indigenous tribesmen of Europe and Gernika is the heart, and holy land of Euskadi. The April 26, 1937 attack was just another escalated threat to Euskadi's ancient precious culture.
My father, Jesus Plaza, was born in Gernika, and vividly recalls the atrocities he endured that changed his family's life and the course of his own.
It is through these proud, hard working, and authentic people that we learn about their culture, rich history of independence, and democracy, a language that is rooted in their land, and the consistent violence from outside trying to exploit the most fertile of lands between Norther Spain and Southern France.
For inquiries please contact me at: begonya@begonyaplaza.com
Reviews
Dear BegonyaThank you so much for the films which had arrived when I got back yesterday evening and watched. I loved them- such a personal journey for you. I especially liked Guernika Lives with its original footage and wonderful music to accompany it- very inspiring. I was even more horrified by the event and so touched by the courage and strength of the Basques- and the people who were interviewed. It must have been very emotional for your father. I so applaud their strength in holding on to their cultural and unique identity.On Saturday I will be sitting in the restaurant you recommended, thinking of the events, and will raise a glass to you and yours.Thank you again,Lesley - MiriamEngland / February, 2013