FILM INFO:

SUNBEAM 

6 mins 35 seconds

Short Doc

Supported by the Sundance Institute Indigenous Program

Status: Seeking World Premiere

San Ildefonso Pueblo potter Barbara "Tahn-Moo-Whé" Gonzales honors her son and grandson through clay, continuing an ancient tradition that keeps families connected across time.

In San Ildefonso Pueblo, clay is memory. Renowned potter Barbara "Tahn-Moo-Whé" Gonzales has spent her life working with clay alongside her family. SUNBEAM is about what remains in our hands after loss and how we continue. As Barbara honors her son and grandson, we come from the earth, return to it, and are always part of one another.

SUNBEAM is a project I’ve wanted to make for a long time. I come from six generations of San Ildefonso Pueblo pottery artists, and I’ve seen my fair share of pottery documentaries with academic, anthropological tones. SUNBEAM was an opportunity for me to create a pottery film from the truest perspective of clay: through the voice and experience of my grandmother, Barbara “Tahn-Moo-Whé” Gonzales.

This is a film about tradition, grief, and the spiritual relationship between pottery and memory. For my family, clay is not simply an art form or cultural object. Working with clay is working directly with our ancestors across generations.

While making SUNBEAM, I challenged myself creatively to move away from some of the repetitive structures I noticed in my earlier work. I invested myself in the atmosphere, emotional rhythm, and texture, allowing moments to breathe naturally on screen. Collaborating with my family throughout this process became one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, not only as a filmmaker, but as a granddaughter and Pueblo woman.

I wanted to make a pottery documentary the world has never seen before, and I believe SUNBEAM does that.

Kuundah Wo’ha (thank you very much).

Charine Pilar Gonzales is a Tewa filmmaker from San Ildefonso Pueblo (PoWohGeh Owingeh) and Santa Fe (OgaPogeh Owingeh), New Mexico. 

Her most recent film, This Land Carries Us (2025), winner of Best Documentary Short at the 2026 deadCenter Film Festival, qualifying the film for Academy Award® consideration, is currently featured in the Tewa Nangeh / Tewa Country exhibit at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. 

Charine 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. She lives in Santa Fe with her family and chunky orange tabby cat, Cheddar.