Celeste Barbosa

Celeste Yumara Barbosa is a first generation self-taught shooting director based in LA. Celeste was born in Anchorage, Alaska and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Raised by a resilient migrant mother and two sisters her childhood was inspired by the tugging of her American and Mexican cultures. She began filmmaking when she was sixteen years old in high school and hasn’t put the camera down since. Growing up she was deeply inspired by the bond she developed with her sisters who all managed to manifest their creative interests through different mediums. (Alexis is a stylist and model, Irma is a multidisciplinary visual artist). Specifically, in her most recent project Enclosures, she used her sister Alexis as the model and her sister's paintings and sculptures in the set design, while her partner Josh shot the film and cousin Jackie was the designated makeup artist. Celeste loves the collaboration with her family and finds a common ground in which she can merge all her sisters' creative interests on a cinematic platform. She shifts perspectives and provides provocative underlying messages. She uses real people and real environments in her life- for example, her grandmother's goat farm in Reseda, to create dreamscapes- a merging of real and fantasy. A cinematic place that is so personal and yet surreal through the juxtaposition of objects, people, and places. Her work revolves around themes of identity, femininity, and the saturation of multiculturalism.