Merope

Short Film

In Collaboration with Sedona Ballet

Merope

Winner of “Best Film Soundtrack” at the 9th Film Music Festival in Los Angeles, and awarded with “Best Composer of the Future” at Cannes’ World Film Festival, the short film Merope, follows a personification of the hidden star on a journey towards emancipation from the ties that historically have bound her and her six sisters, the Pleiades constellation, in a narrative about captivity and victimization, towards a new story where she claims visibility and a more authentic place in the universe for her and her sisters.

Credits & General Information

• Running Time: 08:04 min
• Directed By: Juan Carlos Zaldivar
• Producers: Winifred Muench, Christel Veraart, J.C Zaldivar
• Associate Producer: Rachel Cahayla-Wynne
• Production Company: Sedona Chamber Ballet
• Edited By: Juan Carlos Zaldivar
• Director of Photography: Levi Holiman
• Music/Narration: Christel Veraart
• Dance Director: Rachel Cahayla-Wynne
• Performance/Choreography: Jordan Pelliteri
• Still Photography: James Peterson
• Featured Visual Artist: Amy Ernst
• Photography: Glenn Grayson
• Poetry: Nikita Gill, Hermann Hesse, Christel Veraart

Synopsis

Merope and her sisters, the Pleiades constellation, live in space, void of time and idiom, yet —for centuries— they have inspired artists to create myths, music and performances, which have infused in us a search for universality among our often divided world.

In this original anthropomorphization of Merope, the producers use the film medium itself to create the first iteration of Sedona Ballet’s Reflections Festival, inviting many artists across several arts disciplines —Photography, Music, Spoken Word and Visual Arts—to donate or create works inspired by Merope in one of the most beautiful places – Sedona.

All works were then orchestrated under the direction of filmmaker and visual artist, Juan Carlos Zaldivar, underscored by Christel Veraart’s mesmerizing musical composition from a longer musical composition entitled Pleiades.

In an eternal search for universality, Merope presents herself simultaneously as film and festival. Combining all the arts, she transports us to a universal place, to provide the perfect fertile ground for the authentic YOU.