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Director

Nicole Betancourt

Nicole  was the Producer, Director, Writer, and Camera for the HBO documentary  feature film “Before You Go” (Emmy Award/Golden Spire Award) She was  Producer and Camera for the POV feature film “90 MILES” (Best  Documentary at New York Latino International Film Festival and Festival  de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in Cuba).


She  has created many short videos for distribution online or for community  screenings including the following:  “Healing Rebel” about  neuroplasticity; “Sing the Water Song,” (in collaboration with Native  American grandmothers); shorts on farming in Central America; 70 films  about food for parents; music videos to motivate Latinos to vote; short  video series for HuffPost and The Weather Channel.


Nicole  was granted a Food and Community Fellowship (W.K. Kellogg Foundation)  and a Donella Meadows Sustainability Leader Fellowship. As Executive  Director of MediaRights, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to media for  social change, she produced an award-winning film festival and the  first online outreach toolkit for filmmakers. She has served on many  juries/panels including the Emmy awards.

Director's Statement

We   often talk about being connected to nature, being more than our  bodies.  Over the course of my life I’ve felt this connection when  swimming in  the ocean or looking at a sunset. But then something  happened that made  it more physical, terrifying, changing what I  thought I knew. The shift  happened after I became disabled with ME/CFS  in 2014 and I started to  sense an echo of our destruction of nature in  my own body. It came  through dreams and visions and changed my  aesthetic as a creator, from a  more traditional documentarian to one  who incorporates nonlinear,  metaphysical, and mythical scenarios to  express sensations and  impressions that are not easily communicated  with language or facts.


“THE   UNFIXING” is an exploration of these connections as I witness my own   chronic illness, my child’s illness, and environmental devastation. The   film is a layered cinematic collage of verité, video art, personal   essay, animation, and my 60 year-old family film archive. Private,   internal landscapes of collapse, regeneration, and my illness-induced   lucid dreams inspired staged moments: burying my body under beach   stones; weaving memorial ribbons in a burnt forest; entangling my   half-naked body in roots; dancing underwater with my child. 


Through   illness, loss, and filmmaking, I am discovering ways to connect with   our world in trouble as a witness and as a dreamer. Telling stories   about the world through my personal experiences is a visceral process.   In 1971, when I was three years-old I was picking up little dead fish   scattered along the beach and throwing them back into the water. I  was   trying to save them. My mother, a feminist film teacher, handed me a   super-8 camera to film the fish. Twenty years later I filmed  “Before   You Go” (Emmy/HBO, 1995) about my father who died of AIDS at a time  when  people with AIDS were seen as dangerous and homophobia was even  more  rampant than it is now. More recently, an Algonquin Grandmother  who  wanted to help me heal, invited me to collaborate on a film  project,  “Sing The Water Song” (2018,  YouTube/Vimeo/Facebook/Instagram). This  viral short with 2 million  views celebrates the connection between women  and water as they sing a  sacred water song. In the film, water is a  character that becomes  alive, sentient, and deserving of our respect and  care. 


This   project is a family affair created in the rooms of our lives and the   landscapes we visit. My husband Bray Poor is my long-time creative   collaborator. He is an award-winning sound designer and composer for   theater and film. My children Pilar and Blue and my mother Jeanne, an   accomplished author and artist, are not just characters, but production   designers, prop managers, and production assistants. 


People   today are living in a time of unfathomable loss to our natural world  as  we are reeling from chronic illness and lost loved ones from the   pandemic. Over the five years of making “THE UNFIXING” film we had an   opportunity to create interactive experiences in community gardens in   Manhattan. “THE UNFIXING Video and Sound Installation” is a part of our   community outreach and includes a memorial for losses in the natural   world. It became our role to hold space for people as they came to rest   and grieve. The video screen suspended over a candle-lit coy pond   reflected on the water’s surface. We gave each guest a flower to place   near the candles. We only grieve what we love. The response from   participants was profound - there is a deep need for spaces like this.


We   are living in a time of transition, a liminal space. So many young   people are anxious and in despair, and why wouldn't they be? They are   growing up with looming pandemics and climate disasters. As my child   Blue said at the age of 12, “I don't really have hope that the world's   going to turn around.” But if we don’t believe things can get better,   who will? 


Stories   change our chemistry, the wiring of our brains, and our health. But  our  stories about nature aren't just changing us, they are changing the   landscape. Social and political change starts with how we change the   narrative. We can co-create change in alignment with nature. What   emerges from that might surprise us. I hope that this film offers   another way to face the sickness in our bodies and the earth, a path of   allowing, listening, receiving - all things I thought were passive.  Now I  know they are active, courageous, and acts of rebellion.


Copyright  © nota bene productions inc. / Horizontal Films Media S.L. 2024 

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