A Woman’s Journey: From Ecuador to L.A. : Movies: Two Argentine film makers capture the reality of culture shock in their documentary of a young Ecuadorean’s passage into the United States.

An old Andean tradition about dreams started a documentary project about a young Ecuadorean woman’s passage from rural village to urban Los Angeles. But credit the hard reality of culture shock to enable the film to be completed.

Jorge and Mabel Preloran, Argentine film makers living in Los Angeles, were on a visit to Ecuador in 1981 to make a documentary when they met Zulay Saravino, then a 19-year-old girl living in rural Otavalo in northern Ecuador. The Prelorans, impressed with her curiosity and interest in them, thought she would be a good subject for their documentary. They asked her family for permission to film her.

“It so happened that Zulay’s aunt had a dream a few nights before,” said Mabel Preloran, a Latin American anthropologist. “In her dream, she saw her niece sweeping the house with a broom and finding a grain of corn on the floor. In the Andean tradition, the sweeping symbolizes ‘the cleansing of the soul.’ The grain of corn symbolizes ‘fortune to come.’ When she saw us in her humble house, we immediately became the symbols of her dreams.”

After extensive filming of Zulay that spanned six months in Ecuador and eight years in America, the documentary of her struggle to achieve that dream, “Zulay Facing the 21st Century,” will premiere at 7:30 p.m. Monday in Melnitz Theater at UCLA.

Zulay’s story is one that represents thousands of newcomer immigrants from Latin America. The day after she arrived, she enrolled in an English-as-a-second-language course at the local high school. After two months she had embraced the American way and was selling her handcrafts (sweaters and other woven goods) on Olvera Street, Mabel said. During the next eight years, her profits and a grant from UCLA Film Department enabled her to visit the family three more times and continue filming.

Shortly after the Prelorans’ visit in 1981, Zulay bought a plane ticket on credit and came to Los Angeles to live with the Prelorans for six months. Filming continued intermittently but Zulay had also promised her family she would return. Jorge put the project on hold for a while.

Zulay’s struggles with the language and attempts to adapt to modern technology were all captured by the Prelorans’ camera. But capturing Zulay’s story was to prove difficult.

“I structured it in many ways,” Jorge recalled. “The (Ecuadorean) sceneries were beautiful and the landscapes breathtaking, but there was something wrong dramatically. It had no problems, no drama. One day I showed it to a colleague of mine, and he told me that the true story was the transculturation that happened to her here in L.A. All of a sudden it all made sense to me.

“After residing here for six months, she never changed her traditional dress. She would switch back and forth from the old and new cultures of her life. Then we shot some scenes of her in various places of the city of Los Angeles.”

Jorge’s specialty is what he calls ethnobiographies, “to learn how other people live,” he said from his cozy house in Inglewood, which is decorated with South American artifacts. “My films focus on one person. Monologues by the subject eventually serve as the voice-over. The interesting thing is that they are timeless. There is no mention of history. The issues I like to talk about are universal.”

The movie, financed by a grant from the UCLA Film Department, where Jorge has worked as a film professor for 13 years, now has inserts of Mabel and Zulay talking at the editing machine about her problems of adaptation. Zulay ended up with so many creative responsibilities she was given co-direction credit with Mabel.

The documentary opens with Zulay’s mother talking to her in Quechua, an Indian dialect, telling her that she should stay in America, if her life is fulfilling there. The film also covers customs, rituals and festivities of the Otavaleno culture, mixed with Zulay’s experience in the fast lane of the big city. The question of going back became the final issue, not only in the film but in her real life. The movie leaves the question open. Reality nonetheless was different.

“She couldn’t adjust totally to this new world and finally left for her little town of Otavalo,” Mabel said. “She got married. The last time she visited (last month), she came with her new-born child. She was a very courageous woman and had no fear of accomplishing her dreams, making me realize the importance of them.”