Short Documentary Film Award, Sponsored by the University of Miami
Crafted from over 70 years of archival footage, Melting Snow is a lyrical retelling of an erased history, inspired by the director's grandparents' emigration from Puerto Rico to the South Bronx. The film centers around the 1952 event during which the mayor of San Juan partnered with Eastern Airlines to transport two tons of snow from New Hampshire to Puerto Rico as a gift, meant to enchant Puerto Ricans with a white, American Christmas.
As the spectacle unfolds, we understand Puerto Rico’s colonial predicament condensed in the empty gift. Water tracks the diaspora to the mainland, taking on various forms as it completes its natural hydrologic cycle, serving as a visual illustration of colonialism backwards and forwards in time: from the fading mirage of melting snow to an approaching Hurricane Maria, washing away the fiction of America as a paternalistic colonial power.