You tend to see the same kinds of stories at film festivals, executed with varying amounts of skill and verve. But Lita Albuquerque’s “The Sea Is Within Me,” an epic sci-fi dance story that just played the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, feels extraordinarily unique.
Its inclusion reflects the adventurous curation of the festival, and the stunning potential of Houston’s constellation of locations. It was shot in the city’s Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a century-old former reservoir that is the length of 1.5 football fields and includes 221 columns, each of which climbs 25 feet to the ceiling.
When water fills the cistern, as it does in the film, it appears otherworldly. It’s a location unlike any other, but may not even be the most dramatic water feature in Houston: It has competition from the uptown Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park, a 64-foot architectural fountain.
The cistern provides an astonishing backdrop to the latest story in Albuquerque’s continuing saga following Najma, a 25th century astronaut portrayed by Lita Albuquerque’s daughter, Jasmine Albuquerque. In previous films about Najma, she has visited different periods of time, but founded herself entombed alive. “The Sea Within Me” finds her adrift with no land in sight. Night is coming, and so is a storm.
Lita Albuquerque staged and Jasmine Albuquerque performed five versions of the “Sea Is Within Me” live at the cistern last September, in collaboration with vocalist Carmina Escobar, who appears alongside her onscreen, and double bassist Laura Dykes. The acoustics of the cistern gave the music a delay that Jasmine Albuquerque, who choreographed the piece, had to adapt to. She describes her performances as “a structured improvisation.”
Cinematographer Michael Flanagan shot four of the performances, with seven cameras, taking great care to ensure no one was injured using electrical machines in a space flooded with water. Editor Nicole McDonald edited it all together into the film version of “The Sea Is Within Me,” which the festival screened Saturday at Rice University’s Rice Cinema. Some in the audience had seen both the live and cinematic versions, and found both remarkable in their own ways.
Both Lita and Jasmine Albuquerque explained their process in a post-film Q&A that also included Flanagan and McDonald. As the elder Albuquerque detailed the new mythology collaboration introduces, the other participants explained the logistics of bringing it to life.
“For those of you that have been in the cistern, you can probably relate to how kind of it throws off a lot of your senses,” Jasmine Albuquerque explained. “It’s so magical, and it’s a lot to take in. And then when you’re in the water there, my entire kind of internal ecosystem was very off kilter. I can’t see, step one. I’m dancing on an eight-by-eight black wooden stage, and the water’s black, so I don’t know where the edge of the stage is. That was intense.
“Sonically, there’s a 17 second echo, so I’m also kind of thrown off in that way. So basically, everything is just totally thrown into the air. I felt like I didn’t have my full vocabulary or range because of a little bit of fear of falling off the stage, or just like honestly not knowing what is up, down, left, right, around.”
There is also wildlife in the cistern, not apparent from the film.
“There’s fish, there’s birds,” she noted.
The sense of disorienetation translates to the film — even the colors challenge your perception. At first, Jasmine Albuquerque seems to be garbed in silver blue and Escobar in golden red. But by the end of the film, as they come closer together, we see that they’re wearing the same material, lit differently in the dark water.
You can learn more about Lita Albuquerque’s “The Sea Is Within Me” here, and the Houston Cinema Arts Festival here. And you can read more of our festival coverage here.
Main image: “The Sea Within Me,” courtesy of the Houston Cinema Arts Festival
