Synopsis
EARTH or The Monster of Tierra Amarilla
In 1911 New Mexico, a pregnant woman desperate to save her injured husband must choose between surrendering her land or her body to a corrupt doctor, setting off a haunting struggle for survival.
Cast
Eric Charles Jorgenson as CATRON
Eric Charles Jorgenson as CATRON
Eric Charles Jorgenson as CATRON
Holger Moncada Jr. as LEANDRO
Francisco Ovalle as PABLO ANTONIO
Francisco Ovalle as PABLO ANTONIO
Francisco Ovalle as PABLO ANTONIO
Francisco Ovalle as PABLO ANTONIO
Francisco Ovalle as PABLO ANTONIO
About the Writer/Producer
Leo Garcia
Leo Garcia is a filmmaker whose work moves between narrative cinema, experimental video, and psychologically driven horror. His films often explore themes of identity, entrapment, cultural history, and the consequences of power, drawing from both personal narrative and broader historical contexts.
He wrote, produced, and directed his first film, A Rainy Day, distributed by Universal Television and screened internationally. He later produced Excess Flesh, a psychological thriller rooted in body horror, which premiered at SXSW and received a theatrical release in L.A. before wider distribution on major platforms.
Garcia’s shorter works, including Hammurabi and the experimental documentary ten minutes is two hours, extend his interest in surreal imagery and political critique, examining cultural exploitation, colonial legacy, and the instability of perception. His cinematic language is informed by both early political montage filmmakers and later experimental traditions.
Across his film work, Garcia maintains a multidisciplinary sensibility, integrating performance, visual art, and theatrical structure into a distinct cinematic voice grounded in both personal mythology and social inquiry.
About the Director/Editor
Patrick Kennelly
Patrick Kennelly makes art like someone who’s tasted the third rail and decided it was a food group. A filmmaker, theater director, post-production surgeon, and curator of the bold and the unclassifiable, he operates in a space somewhere between sensory overload and ritual catharsis. His art doesn’t flirt with extremity—it marries it in a fever dream of broken identities, ecstatic violence, and surreal pop tropes bled raw.
As Artistic Director of Highways Performance Space & Gallery, one of L.A.’s longest-running experimental hothouses, Kennelly curates avant-garde performance and visual art that might otherwise have no home. He also founded and directs Film Maudit 2.0, a genre-defying festival of "cinema that doesn’t behave," named after Jean Cocteau’s infamous “cursed film” pop-up. There, he champions the outliers, the unclassifiable, the too-strange-to-stream.
His debut feature, Excess Flesh (World Premiere - SXSW 2015), blew up polite film discourse with its bulimic, body-horror-fueled indictment of image culture and psychic collapse. The Daily Beast dubbed it “the most twisted movie at SXSW—and of the year.” Depending on who you ask, it's either a psychotic break caught on camera or a genre film that ate its own tail. His 2020 short film Hammurabi, distributed by ALTER, navigates religious retribution and generational trauma through a lens of mythic dread, fusing biblical justice with an eerie, modern intimacy.
Onstage, Kennelly works like a medium picking up radio static from the collective unconscious. He’s staged volatile minds—Sarah Kane, Amiri Baraka, Maria Irene Fornés, Sam Shepard, Franz Xaver Kroetz, John Whiting—writers who turn fragmentation and political poetics into blunt instruments.His own work tends toward the collaborative, physical, nonlinear: a scream in a cathedral lit with fluorescents and streaked with VHS ghosts.
His 2012 performance spectacle Patty: The Revival refracted the life-myths of Patty Duke and Patty Hearst into a high-gloss, live-action pop trauma-loop—an operatic American eulogy wrapped in glitter and echo. It earned five L.A. Weekly Theater Award nominations, including Best Musical. Its upcoming sequel, PATTY vs. PATTY (The Algorithm Wars), spirals further into post-human delirium: ten Pattys, AI doubles, cancellation simulators, glitch-folk soundtracks, and a sentient concert engineered to erase her. A digital Passion Play staged at the end of history.
Kennelly holds a BFA in Film/Video from CalArts and an MFA in Theater Directing from UCLA and is a recipient of the Princess Grace Award. His work has been presented in 18 countries, where it’s often met less as a conventional screening or performance than as an experience to sit with—works that invite reflection, interpretation, and a certain level of stamina.
About the Scenic Designer
Mark Kanieff
Mark Kanieff is a set designer and sculptor working across theatre, opera, and dance. His recent design credits include Democracy [sic](Art of Acting Studio, HCLAB), Il Giasone (NEO Opera), Intimate Apparel (Chapman University), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Edgemar Center for the Arts), and the dance work The Other Side (Gramercy Studios).
He also designed extensively in Rome, Italy, where he spent 20 years working in epidemiology and biostatistics—an experience that continues to inform the conceptual rigor of his visual work.
He holds an MFA in Scenic Design from CalArts and a BFA in Sculpture from Carnegie Mellon University.
His recent sculptures and installations explore the concept of “plodding,” while his current projects include the development of a puppet work examining informed consent in human medical research.
About the Lighting Designer
Pablo Santiago
Pablo Santiago, originally from Chiapas, México, is a lighting and scenic designer whose work engages film, live cinema, and performance. His collaboration on Francis Ford Coppola’s Distant Vision—Live Cinema reflects a sustained interest in cinematic language and the convergence of camera, light, and real-time performance.
Alongside his film work, he has designed for theatre and opera with institutions including Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Mark Taper Forum, Geffen Playhouse, LA Opera, San Francisco Symphony, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His designs are recognized for their precision and atmospheric depth, translating across intimate narratives and large-scale productions.
Santiago is the recipient of the Richard Sherwood Award and a Stage Raw Award, with multiple Ovation Award nominations. He holds an MFA in Lighting Design from UCLA.
About the Costume Designer
Isabel Rubio
Isabel Rubio is a Mexican costume designer and longtime New Yorker whose work reflects a sustained commitment to storytelling and collaboration. Following Covid, her return to the field has been grounded in bringing characters to life with clarity and care.
Her practice is defined by flexibility and a willingness to explore new visual perspectives, allowing her to work across theatre, dance, film, and television. This range of experience informs a broad and adaptable visual vocabulary.
Her designs have been presented internationally at the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia, the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, and the Morelia Film Festival in México. She has held a Fellowship in Costume Design at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and was a juried exhibitor at the USIT/Prague Scenofest.
She is based in Brooklyn, New York, where she continues her work with the support of her family.
https://www.isabelrubio.com/bio
About the Composer / Sound Designer
Aaron Drake
Award-winning Los Angeles based composer, Aaron Drake, writes for a variety of media including film and television, contemporary dance, interactive media, and sound installation.
He has a deep interest in meta-narratives and the sonification of social relationships. Aural mnemonics, EVP, sonic masking, codes and ciphers, historical trends, and social tendencies are a few areas that have inspired his compositions.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2509120/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
About the Visual Effects Artist
Ryan Harrison
Ryan Harrison is a filmmaker and actor known for writing, directing, and starring in the action-comedy Ninja Badass. He is not the professional tennis player or a contestant on the American Ninja WarriorTV show. He specializes in indie filmmaking, having previously done VFX work for films like The Revenant.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2509120/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
About Sirius Productions
Founded in 1998 by Leo Garcia, Sirius Productions is an indie film company specializing in magical realism, psychological drama, and short-form documentary films. Our team challenges norms and ignites imaginations, creating innovative and original narratives. We value creative freedom, collaboration, and inclusivity, fostering a supportive environment for diverse voices. Join us as we push the boundaries of indie filmmaking and inspire with our cinematic experiences. Sirius Productions, where storytelling is the star.
