Logline
A sensory experimental film where Tewa language, image, and memory move together across land and generations, layering archival footage, portraiture, and sound into a meditative experience.
Synopsis
This Land Carries Us is a short experimental doc that centers Tewa stories and memory across Tewa homelands in northern New Mexico. Guided by the voice of the filmmaker’s grandmother, who recites a story written by the filmmaker’s late younger brother in the Tewa language, the film unfolds as a sensory meditation on land, family, and intergenerational connection.
Created for the Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the film responds directly to the absence of Tewa people in landscapes historically celebrated in Georgia O'Keeffe's work, re-centering Tewa presence.
Drawing from the filmmaker’s upbringing between San Ildefonso Pueblo and Santa Fe, This Land Carries Us is an offering to family, language, and the land that carries us.
The film affirms a truth: the relationship between Tewa people and ancestral lands is ongoing, embodied, and unbroken.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
I'm from San Ildefonso Pueblo (PoWohGeh Owingeh / Where the Water Cuts Through). The land where I was raised, between San Ildefonso Pueblo and Santa Fe (OgaPogeh Owingeh / White Shell Water Place), carries generations of memory, story, and language. This Land Carries Us is my offering back to our Tewa lands, and more specifically, to our Tewa people who continue to live in relationship with our mother earth.
This short experimental doc centers Tewa presence, voice, and memory across our ancestral homelands.
Though this film is led with a Tewa heart, it is also partially inspired by the landscapes painted by Georgia O’Keeffe and the absences within them. I wanted to reframe that gaze. You cannot speak of Tewa land without also speaking of Tewa people. Before it was called O’Keeffe Country, it was, and will always be, Tewa Country. This film was created as part of the groundbreaking Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibit at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The story is deeply personal, as I’ve adapted a story written by my late younger brother, Tyler Gonzales, and asked my grandmother, Barbara Gonzales, to translate the story into our Tewa language, and then we recorded her speaking the voice over. In the film, I bring together site-specific footage, family narratives, and the voices of my relatives. The visuals include mixed media such as Hi-8 archival material shot roughly 30 years ago, present-day portraits, stop-motion sequences, astro videography, polaroids, etc.
These portraits of Tewa people in both traditional and modern clothing, standing on our land, are acts of visibility and love. They remind visitors that our connection to this place is not just of the past, but also of the present and future.
I come from six generations of Pueblo pottery artists. When my family works with clay, we think good thoughts so that our pottery reflects that same "goodness". I approach filmmaking the same way. I respect the spirit of the story and create with love for my people. This Land Carries Us is a celebration of being Tewa, and a reminder to visitors that we are still here, living and thriving on the lands that have always carried us.
Charine Pilar Gonzales (Ku’yan Povi)
Tewa Filmmaker | San Ildefonso Pueblo | Povi Studios
TRAILER
This Land Carries Us was created for the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum - Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country Exhibition (November 7th, 2025 in Santa Fe, New Mexico).
Charine Pilar Gonzales
Charine Pilar Gonzales is a Tewa filmmaker from San Ildefonso Pueblo (PoWohGeh Owingeh) and Santa Fe (OgaPogeh), New Mexico.
Her most recent film, This Land Carries Us (2025), won the Oscar-qualifying Best Documentary Short award at the 2026 deadCenter Film Festival and is currently featured in the Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Her other works include PoWohGeh Speaks (2025), the first feature film created entirely in the Tewa language in partnership with San Ildefonso Pueblo, and River Bank (Pō-Kehgeh) (2023), a short film that marked the return of narrative fiction filmmaking to San Ildefonso Pueblo for the first time since the 1980s.
Gonzales co-produced Winding Path (Sundance 2024) and associate-produced People of the West (upcoming).
She holds an MFA in Creative Writing - Screenwriting from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a 2026 Forge Project Fellow, 2026 imagineNATIVE Screenwriting Shorts Lab Fellow, 2025 Stowe Story Labs New Voices–New Mexico Fellow, and 2024 Sundance Institute Native Lab Fellow.