heaven / helen peña

See you this Sunday for COSMIC RAGE❤️‍🔥a benefit screening for LA Tenants Union & Community Self-Defense Coalition Los Angeles! We’re excited to share we added two films to the lineup: 🔺Bethlehem Bandolero By Larissa Sansour, 2004, Palestine, 3min 🔺Republica By Grace Passô, 2020, Brazil, 16min Will now play alongside: 🔺The Sun Quartet I & II By Los Ingrávidos, 2017, Mexico, 16mm trans to digital, color, sound, 8 min. (part 1) and 12:50 (part 2) 🔺My Caldera By Cauleen Smith, 2022, U.S., digital, color, sound, 5 min 🔺Concrete Resources (Thank you for keeping me a company of images) By Emir West, 2024, U.S. and Mexico, digital, color, sound, 9 min. 🔺Dreams Like Paper Boats By Samuel Suffren, 2024, Haiti, b&w, sound, 19 min 🔺Trokas Duras By Jazmin Garcia, 2025, U.S., 17 min  🎤 live performance by @jazzygirl______ and dj set by @re___vival to follow the films 🌮 we’ll have taquitos and tamales for sale!! 📆 May 17, 2-4pm 2220 Arts + Archives (2220 Beverly Blvd) 🎟️More info & tickets via LAfilmforum.org

THIS SUNDAY!🔥🔮🎞️COSMIC RAGE🔥🔮🎞️ Curated in response to recent attacks against immigrants, COSMIC RAGE is a program of experimental films and live music. ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏽Raising funds for the LA Tenants Union & Community Self-Defense Coalition Los Angeles (CSDCLA). ❤️‍🔥The Sun Quartet I & II By Los Ingrávidos The Sun Quartet confronts the climate of corruption and violence that dominates contemporary Mexican leadership and militarism. Across its four parts, the series exemplifies the poetic operations of the collective, who reconcile elements ranging from improvisational music, superimposed cinematography, poetic texts both read and cast on screen, and documentation of protests. ❤️‍🔥Concrete Resources (Thank you for keeping me a company of images) By Emir West Through repeated interventions of war, resource extraction, and agricultural exploitation, U.S. and British powers have attempted to render Nicaragua a void along the Central American isthmus. Still, the country’s legacy as “the land of lakes and volcanoes” and “a country of poets,” creates a romantic image of its resistance. ❤️‍🔥Dreams Like Paper Boats By Samuel Suffren Edouard has been living in Port-au-Prince with just his daughter Zara for five years. Since his wife left, his daughter and him have only received a cassette from her, and that was a long time ago. After years of absence, what can we expect from a distant love? ❤️‍🔥My Caldera By Cauleen Smith The imagery of the film is of volcanic scenes in various life stages, from pouring magma to inert mountain, with colors unnaturally saturated – purple, blue, and orange. A driving, heavy metal soundtrack provides an apt audio accompaniment to the visual onslaught of nature’s rage. ❤️‍🔥Trokas Duras By Jazmin Garcia A visual journey through the interior landscapes of a Jornalero’s dreams, his waking reality in L.A., and what it looks like when a group of people relegated to serving others labors for their own elevation of body and spirit. An homage to the unique, idiosyncratic, and customized old pick-up trucks driven by Latino day laborers and the intimacy that is cultivated in and around them. & more TBA! 📆 May 17, 2-4pm @2220arts

On May 17, join us for 🔥🔮🎞️COSMIC RAGE🔥🔮🎞️A Fundraiser for the LA Tenants Union (LATU) & Community Self-Defense Coalition Los Angeles (CSDCLA) Curated in response to recent attacks against immigrants, COSMIC RAGE is a program of films and live music that asks us to honor the grief and rage within as a creative force which propels marginalized people towards action. These documentary, narrative and experimental works represent various perspectives by Latin-American, Black and immigrant filmmakers, all bursting with visions of rebellion and transformation. Programmed as an act of protest, the films are all formally subversive explorations of migration, empire, ritual and revolt. The films will be followed by a live performance with Jazmin Romero (@jazzygirl______ ) and a DJ set by gh0sttaste (@re___vival ). We’ll also have food for sale! ❤️‍🔥The Sun Quartet I & II By Los Ingrávidos, 2017, Mexico, 16mm trans to digital, color, sound, 8 min. (part 1) and 12:50 (part 2) ❤️‍🔥Concrete Resources (Thank you for keeping me a company of images) By Emir West, 2024, U.S. and Mexico, digital, color, sound, 9 min. ❤️‍🔥Dreams Like Paper Boats By Samuel Suffren, 2024, Haiti, b&w, sound, 19 min ❤️‍🔥My Caldera By Cauleen Smith, 2022, U.S., digital, color, sound, 5 min ❤️‍🔥Trokas Duras By Jazmin Garcia, 2025, U.S., 17 min 📆 May 17, 2-4pm 2220 Arts + Archives (2220 Beverly Blvd) 🎟️Grab your tickets via the link in bio All proceeds will go towards supporting immigrant tenants and organizing efforts at: ♦️LA Tenants Union (LATU) is an autonomous tenant union organizing tenants fighting gentrification and displacement across LA neighborhoods, and is currently running a mutual aid fund for struggling immigrant members in crisis. ♦️Community Self-Defense Coalition Los Angeles (CSDCLA) has been a pillar across LA in organizing defense to support immigrant communities across LA county, and are raising money to support separated families with access to food, medical supplies, legal assistance, housing security and a means to contact their loved ones. 🛠️ curated by Helen Peña alongside @jorge_ravioli & LA Film Forum

Making films is really hard, grateful for every ounce of community we can build in the process. Thank you so much @samanthacurley @navamau @levelground.co for this opportunity! // 📣 DEADLINE EXCLUSIVE 📣 Announcing the launch of Level Ground’s Filmmakers Fellowship “Time and time again, I am faced with the reality that the film and television industry can be a site of isolation and systemic disempowerment for artists of color, queer and trans creatives, and anyone who doesn’t fit a very specific mold determined by the dominant class. This fellowship is an exploration and an experiment to see what happens when we plant seeds outside the studio system and beyond the mainstream.” -Nava Mau Level Ground’s Filmmakers Fellowship supports a cohort of trans and queer filmmakers and filmmakers of color in creating their next short films. Through a series of film salons, 1:1 mentorship, a stipend, and fiscal sponsorship, we’re exploring new models of making and sharing work with emerging filmmakers motivated by innovation and creative risk. 🎥 Congrats to the 17 filmmakers who are part of the inaugural fellowship cohort: @andy.james.garcia @amaxey422 #AvrielleGallagher @fakingprofessionalism @chica_barbosa @emorychaojohnson #EvelynAngelicaMartinez @gerrymaravilla @hansenbursic @orange.mooon @jd.shields @nicolemdizon @paolojriveros @rrainehanson @csrcalloway #TaegenMeyer

Really grateful to have shared my first ever video installation twice this year, both at @calarts and @montevistaprojects 🩵🌊 I’m forever in awe of the world building that can happen through experimental film, and when I get to pair that with my obsession for creating sanctuary spaces it feels like magic. Endless gratitude to everyone that helped me make this vision come to life each time, and to those who showed up to witness and take part in it. My dream is to bring this installation to the place that inspired it: South Florida. If anyone is interested in supporting this, please contact me ✨ I’m excited to keep growing and learning with every iteration. Blue Longing, 2025, video installation with sound, B&W and color, 4:30min 📷 by @2071photo and myself

32 today 💫 it’s been a trying year but i’m grateful for the miracles (small and big) that make it possible for me to be here and i’m grateful to be loved by many of you 🥹 💕 donate to my rent fund💸💚: paypal: paypal.me/hpena44 venmo: @orangemoooon zelle: my phone number 📷 by thee talented @azhaayanna

BLUE LONGING, an installation by @orange.mooon , opens December 6 @montevistaprojects 🌀🐚🩵 In BLUE LONGING, two star-crossed queer lovers escape apocalypse and maroon in the bottom of the ocean. An amorphous becoming and unbecoming takes place as they meet each other in its opaque depths.  As fascism rises, so does the sea level, making our earth unbreathable and unlivable for the many. What kind of unity is possible in the shadows of the submarine? A womb, a galaxy, and the bottom of the ocean all offer a glimpse of possibility. Inspired by the works of Caribbean anticolonial poets, Dionne Brand and Kamau Brathwaite, BLUE LONGING is a cinematic ritual space that invites us to meditate on the contradictions of escape, fugitivity and return, considering what kind of love is possible through it all.  📽️Helen Peña is a child of the Atlantic, filmmaker, and cultural programmer from Miami, FL. They create socially and politically engaged cinematic rituals centered around memory, mysticism and water bodies. Installation by Helen Peña  Starring Dawn Harris @dawnixtt & Kili Ku’uwehilani kilidakid Exhibition produced by @level.ground Special thanks to @ye.tunde @samanthacurley @ryereuel @rodrigo_mlopez for making this possible! Flyer by @bird_of_paradigm

Earlier this summer, I had the honor of collaborating with my brother @dyanidouze alongside a team of talented friends to create a music video for his new single, REWIRE🐍⚡️✨ Dyani was thinking a lot about the healing power of the spinal cord, electric charges, roots, rivers, connectivity, movement and flow. The snakes that move through us in times of change. Together, we birthed images that stemmed from these ideas. It made my heart full to shoot on 16mm in some of my favorite places in Miami, Virginia key and Bill Bags park (even in the thick of the humidity and 90 degree weather 😅). Thank you for the opportunity to co-create visuals for your hypnotic sounds @dyanidouze 🌊🫂 📺Do yourself a favor and watch in full, link in bio to do so✨ Shoutout to the team🎖️ Directed by Helen Peña Co-directed by Dyani Douze Performed by Nadia Wolff, Dyani Director of Photography - Helen Peña Camera Assist - Monica Sorelle @monicugh Editing - Dyani Douze Production Assistants - Sheherazade Thénard @sheherazade.thenard Haiwen @hotbugsnearu Vocal Production - Aidan Wada-Dawson, Aaria Manchanda Special Thanks - Barron Sherer @moving_image_alliance and Rodan Tekle Song written and produced by Dyani

still savoring it 🥭💦🫂

thank you @kierra.davvon for capturing this transformative moment for me! i had just taken the leap of faith to move across the country, cut all my hair off (again), and applied to art school. a year later and i can say it was all entirely worth it! thank you for harnessing the energy of the portal that it was ✨ if you’re in DC you can see this piece in the exhibition titled Soft Archives: Threads and Textures of History which will be up until April 27. follow @kierra.davvon for more info!

a year ago i got to share the life changing experience of being knee deep in the swamp wetlands surrounded by cypress and pine trees and other queer friends. for the longest, these parts of south florida were a source of so much fear, it was so healing to surrender into the dark unknown swamp water, bare feet in the muck, to sit in it and meditate on all the mirrors and reflections everywhere. opaque places have sm to teach us. grateful for this land for taking hold of me and not letting me go. thank you queer swamp walk friends for the healing journey, can’t wait to be in the swamp with yall again 🐊🌾🪷

So excited to be coming home on my birthday weekend for a program I co-curated alongside Dr. Terri Francis called: THE EARTH IS A LIVING THING 🌺🌿 📆 Sunday Dec 8 @ 7PM 📍Bridge Red Studios 12425 NE 13th Ave 🔗 Link in bio to get ur FREE RSVP Join us for an immersive evening of sound healing (by @_agua.dulce_ ) and short archival and experimental films. In this multisensory outdoor film program, we reflect upon the layered cinematic histories linking and refracting Black and Indigenous Miami and by extension South Florida, the United States and the Caribbean. The images invite us to connect and contrast Miami’s built and (seemingly) natural environments in tender homage to the earliest stewards of these places: the Taíno, the Miccosukee, the Tequesta, and the migrating Haitians, African Americans and Bahamians in search of a beautiful, dignified life. The Earth is a Living Thing is too a meditation on the land, the swamp, the salt water, what it all has witnessed, what it all endures. We will see works from 1929 as well as 2019 and 2024. This curious combination of historical and contemporary videos, reveling in silence as much as sound, relating narration and abstraction in their difference brings the experimental and the archival into view and into dialogue. Offering sound healing, our film program, and discussion, this evening is a journey through time and across landscapes within us and around us. 🌱 Children’s Games and Baptism, Miami, August 1929, Zora Neale Hurston, 3 min. 🌱 Songs for Earth & Folk, Cauleen Smith, 2013, 11min. 🌱 Spirit Emulsion, Siku Allooboo, 2022, 8min. 🌱1881 Henry Meade Leighton, Onajide Shabaka, 2018, 1 min, 48 sec. 🌱 Sunshine State (Extended Forecast), Christopher Harris, 2009, 8min. 🌱 Home Movies, Hayes Collection, Virginia Key Beach, 1956, 3min. 🌱 Blue Longing, Helen Peña, 2024, 4min. (Work in progress film by yours truly) 🌱 Distraction of Symbolism, Deborah Anzinger, 2019, 7min. Cosponsored by UM Center for Global Black Studies (@umglobalblackstudies ), Bridge Red Studios (@bridgeredstudios ) and Under the Bridge Art Space [first slide is a clip from Deborah Anzinger’s, Distraction of Symbolism]