The story of the making of Xenia Rubinos' video for "Hair Receding" is such a good one, that we're gonna let her tell it herself:About the protagonist:Carmen is from the small town of Arroyo, Puerto Rico. She has lived a life of simplicity and great magnitude. She and the women of my family were a huge inspiration for this record. She is a strong woman full of positivity, light and clairvoyance. She lives alone, but is not lonely. She finds beauty and happiness in the simplicity of the quotidian. Among many things, she symbolizes for me the resilient, positive power of my people.About location:The video was shot in the city of Hartford, CT which is where I'm from. The video begins in Carmen's apartment, and continues on Park Street, which is a gathering place for the large Latino community in the city. We found people to be mostly unaffected by the shoot despite one passerby saying in Spanish: "Those are the same cameras they use to go the Moon. Maybe that lady is going to the Moon." The shoot sometimes became an experiment in surrealism as we walked around town with my grandmother in her complicated contraption.About the shoot:Director Francesco Lettieri from Naples, Italy, co-producer/drummer Marco Buccelli and myself shot the video in 2 days, with a rigorous documentary-style schedule. We collaborated on a rough script and stayed pretty true to that plan, allowing for improvisation along the way. Carmen was a real trooper and impressed all of us with how willing she was to experiment and make a scene in public. Our collaborations so far with Lettieri have all mainly operated on a great deal of risk taking and spur-of-the-moment, last-minute shoots.
Advertisement
For more Xenia news, check out Our Date With Xenia.