"A Place to Call Home" | clara pérez medina

"A Place to Call Home" (2024)
Short Film | Director, Director of Photography | 10 mins

My film, “A Place to Call Home: An Inside Look at La Peña’s Rotating Mural Program,” captures the vibrant and powerful work of Bay Area-based political muralists who preserve the cultural heritage of the Latinx, Black, and Indigenous communities that have graced the halls and walls of the La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, California.

In my film, I capture three generations of prominent and emerging Bay Area artists as they tell the story of their murals that depict ancestral veneration, community care in the pandemic, and intergenerational belonging. The film features a new generation of young artists who paint over the previous mural and create a new collective piece of art that reflects both their collective ethos as artists and a new vision of La Peña as it evolves as a community center.

It is rare to capture art in process and our film is a celebration of the power of artists to transform emotion, color, and technique into powerful messages about belonging and community care in the Bay Area.

My film, “A Place to Call Home,” celebrates the cultural bearers who believe in the power of art to foster social change and community care.