As we move into Havana Habibi Week, and we share the screening of the 2016 film with our community again, I wanted to share this letter I received in 2016 after the First Look screening by Corina Fitch, Artist, Midwife, Nurse. Her words are powerful and heartfelt, and inspire me to continue this work. - Tiffany “Hanan” Madera

Hanan,

i was not able to squeeze thru the crowds after the film to tell you how deeply moving your film was.  nor could i have expressed in words the depth of what i was feeling as i was still processing it myself.

there is nothing more powerful than a woman telling her truth.  i have always been impressed and inspired by your authenticity and now i understand the depth from which it emerges.  "havana habibi" is truly a story of the transformation from tiffany to hanan--from pain to healing and embodiment. only now do i understand the deeply personal nature of the healing work you have done with battered and abused women.  the way that you have brought this sacred, archetypal dance to their bodies and allowed each woman to find her own, personal and beautiful expression through it is a act of pure grace.  

i love how the pain and dismemberment of what you share, though central to what unfolds later, does not take center stage in the story but rather serves as the catalyst in the search for identity and meaning.   what emerges is a story of profound personal healing and transformation that ripples out into the world and effects the lives and hearts and bodies of the women you work with, allowing each of them to tell her own story.

the authenticity that lives and breathes in your film can only come from a person who has touched the center of her own sorrow, faced her demons, and recognized the potential that was locked inside of them.  a person who has lifted the veil, held space for her darkness,  midwifed it into the light , and allowed it to become the wellspring from which her greatest gifts and contribution to the world flow.  

the courage and bravery that took you on this journey to Self inspired these young women, living in a place of very real oppression and confinement, to become liberated in their own bodies, to connect with their own pain, their own story, their own matrilineage, and become embodied as the pure expression of Shakti, the Divine Feminine.  to sit, with my mother and daughter and watch your film, feeling the spirit of my grandmother as you taught the ladies to bring the energy of their grandmothers into their bodies, was truly a gift.  thank you for all that you are, for who you are being in the world, and for the unique gifts that you bring. 

i wanted to share this quote with you because it speaks so beautifully to what you have modeled in this film and in your life.

Perhaps you know it already...

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters To A Young Poet 

My mother was also blown away by the film.  I am cc-ing her here because I know she wanted to be able to express to you personally how much she loved it.  

love,

Corina

PS and i loved that you included the excerpt from Shakti Rising, as it is a piece of my own story of loss, healing, and the search for self!  i am honored to be woven together into the fabric of so many stories from the women whose lives you have touched....

Don’t miss your chance to attend the screening and bellydance roundtable discussion on Saturday, 10/27 at O Cinema. Tickets are just $20.