Reflection

The word "hurricane" comes from the name for the Mayan god of wind, storm, and fire, "Huracàn." Just as the idea for the name of this film came from examining the origin of the word I had grown so familiar with while researching for this project, the idea for the film itself came from a similar desire to find the origin of the phenomenon of extreme weather events. After seeing the damage caused by Harvey, Irma, Maria and other recent weather occurrences, I was left wondering why all of these destructive events were happening so quickly. Through research, I was able to find out that many scientists believe the reason for these extreme hurricanes is the rising temperatures of the ocean. In this film, I wanted to communicate to viewers just how intense and violent these storms are becoming, and I also wanted to focus on how these storms, specifically Maria, impacted the places and the people they cross paths with. As someone who lives in New York and relatively unaffected by many of these recent weather disasters, I made this film as a way to show myself, and others like me, that while there are some of us who were not affected by these storms, there are real people who are suffering and dying because of these hurricanes and because of climate change, and entire towns and islands who are still trying to recover, economically, agriculturally, and emotionally from these traumas.