Carla Gutiérrez, in a documentary, enters Frida’s mind (Video)

MEXICO CITY (Process).- Winner of the Jonathan Oppenheim American Documentary Editing Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, the feature film Frida. Her truth, her art, her words It is an “intimate portrait to enter the mind of the Mexican painter,” highlights Peruvian director Carla Gutiérrez.

She thus debuts with this 87-minute film, when she already has a long career as a film editor.

The film will be released only in theaters in Mexico, under Cinépolis Distribución, this May 9, while in the rest of the world it can only be seen, since last March, on Amazon Prime Video. The documentary contains animations of several works by the author of The broken Column (1944) y The two Fridas (1939), and is based on his diary, with interviews he conducted with Raquel Tibol, who was an art critic of Processin addition to essays and numerous letters that the artist herself wrote to her loved ones.

Actress Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero, also from Peru, provides the voice of Kahlo in off. It is heard at the beginning of the film:

“I paint because I need to!”

And almost at the end you hear another fragment from the creator of The wounded deer (1946):

“In my life I have painted little, without the slightest desire for glory, or ambition, with the conviction of first of all giving myself pleasure, and then being able to earn a living with my craft. “I have lost a series of things that would have filled my horrible life, but painting completed my life.”

Gutiérrez, with a master’s degree in film from Stanford University, has been the editor of RBG, The Crown, Reportero, Chavela Vargas, Julia and Pray away: The cross inside the closet. He emphasizes that he wanted to go far beyond the symbol that Frida has become, “and more than all, find her as a human being, a complex being, a being with weaknesses and fragility, and also with a lot of passion and a lot of strength.”

In Frida…(United States 2024), produced by Katia Maguire, Sara Bernstein, Justin Wilkes, Loren Hammonds and Alexandra Johnes, shows Kahlo from a very young age until her death. Countless photos of her and archival black and white audiovisuals where she is captured stand out. They talk about her, of course, about her accident, her relationship with Diego Rivera, her stay in the United States, her contact with the surrealist André Bretón, and the physical pain that that terrible accident left her. . Overall it shows the complexities of her thoughts and her art.

Gutiérrez is recognized for her Emmy and Oscar-nominated documentaries, and is a member of the American Film Academy and Film Editors.

Year and a half of work

“The story is what called me, it asked me to direct it,” says the director, highlighting that she created the feature film in a year and a half. She counts:

“I am Peruvian, a migrant in the United States, I arrived in that country at the age of fourteen, and the first time I saw a painting of Frida I was nineteen years old. Is called Borderline, which shows Kahlo between the United States and Mexico border. And as an immigrant I had my ideas about the United States, which in many cases is not a world that welcomes you with open arms, and I was missing and romanticizing my relationship with my native nation a lot.”

He narrates his experience of seeing Borderline:

“I said, ‘That’s what I’m feeling, it’s Frida but it really reflected my emotions.’ So that was the beginning of my obsession. I read a lot about her. I learned all the details of her life, and as I grew older I continued connecting with her paintings. Like many women – more than we think – I also had a spontaneous abortion, not as dramatic as Frida’s, but in that painting I felt a refuge, and I was very grateful to the artist, because women don’t even talk. between us of those experiences, and she said it openly. She made a portrait of what happened to her.”

Go on:

“I have been editing projects by important women for years, so I already have experience working with archival material and giving voice to prominent personalities. I thought, ‘The combination of everything kind of gives me the confidence to be able to create this story about Khalo the way I believe.’ When I had the idea, the motivation was really to see that the testimony that she left us in writing and in her paintings existed. So she herself could tell most of her story on the big screen. At the beginning of the investigation, when we had gathered all the material that she left written, Frida said: ‘I’m going to tell my own story, so leave me the microphone.’”

Hard research

He remembers that he had to find all the archival material he could, all of Frida’s writings that are in different parts of the world, in museums, in private collections, in the Blue House of Coyoacán, in short. She started from the biography written by Hayden Herrera, “which is like the Bible about Frida Kahlo’s life, because she began researching her in the seventies, when many people who had known the artist were still alive.”

He spoke with Hayden:

“He also opened up his original investigation to us. Currently she lives between New York and Vieques. “She is American, but she has a Latin last name because she married an architect who, if I’m not mistaken, was Guatemalan.”

–How did you choose the fragments of the diary and letters that the painter wrote for the documentary?

–The question was how to really capture its spirit. And also how to be able to make that connection of her lived experience with her voice in the voice of the actress. For example, for me it was very important to present her somewhat rebellious spirit, which contradicted the social pressures that all Latin American girls have growing up in a very Catholic environment. We were looking for fragments that showed those feelings, that represented her and her strong voice, her passion and her curiosity.

–What was it like to shape the documentary with archival film materials and also with all the animations so that the film really had a style and dynamism?

–We really wanted to take advantage of that contrast of the real world that inspired and formed this artist, but we even wanted to present her inner world to hear her heart and her emotions. So the archival material allowed us to present the Mexico and the United States that she lived in. We chose archival shots as if the audience were seeing it next to Frida’s hand or through the creator’s eyes.

“A nice contrast is going from that world that at the time was in black and white to the explosion of colors. We try to make the public literally dive into their internal world, and start swimming inside the pool of their emotions, like being inside their heart, and like entering their mind, and we decided to animate the art, give it a little of movement so that the story continues in a cinematic space and give it a cinematic life because Frida’s art is Frida’s art.”

–Was it difficult to get the rights to be able to work on animation with Kahlo’s works?

–Diego Rivera granted his and Frida’s rights, both in works and writings, to an irrevocable trust to grant the right to the Mexican people, and that trust is managed by the Bank of Mexico. The sensational thing is that that is why so many stories about Frida are possible. Any artist who wants to make a version of Frida can go to the trust and ask, which seems extraordinary to me, because there are heirs of famous people who only give exclusivity for one version. Her story will continue to be told in different ways, and that for me is a gift to the Mexican people.

“For this documentary, a lot of research was carried out, not only to find all the photographic images of Frida, we also used the short films of Frida, perhaps only four minutes exist, and there are some shots in off that we couldn’t get. It was a very intense and very beautiful work, because in the 1920s all the images of Mexico were static. We find a man who has been buying hunting movies in markets and we have some shots of him.

“The idea of ​​the animation is to immerse ourselves hugging Frida. Now, deciding to animate her painting was a risky decision, one that we had from the beginning because it is also an expensive decision. Animation costs a lot. The intention was to focus on the emotional content of each painting. “We never bring external elements into the paintings, but we do extend the objects that exist within the work, and I remain happy with that decision.”

To emphasize:

“Touch the art of such a famous artist is a difficult decision, but we need to do it to bring it to life in a unique way.”

–You have been heard constantly saying that it is a documentary for women. What is it referring to?

–Women are very used to living our sufferings in silence. Not to speak strongly with our opinions, and Frida for me is an example of a woman who gave herself permission to say everything openly, although at times it was difficult and very painful, but she left us her voice in a very honest way. in his paintings.

“Frida now represents a lot for other communities. She, when gender norms were not upheld, presented herself in a very masculine manner when she was young. She cared a lot about some masculine traits and she gave more emphasis to her little mustache, she didn’t shave, and for her that was very sensual.

“For the ‘queer’ community, people who don’t consider themselves feminine or masculine, it’s very important. The same for people who have physical limits, physical pain. Also for Latin migrants in the United States, and there are those of us who have a personal connection with their art by communicating so openly, that connects with many people.”

–Does the documentary remain outside Fridomania and feminism or is it integrated into both movements?

–The term of being a feminist did not exist at that time. Frida was simply speaking openly and seeking a balance in being a woman in that social context. For me, she is a feminist symbol, not because she decided to take a term, but because of the freedoms that she gave herself, and that I believe many women seek.

“As for Fridomania, the intention was really to go far beyond the icon, to go far beyond the symbol that Frida has become.”

Ultima:

“We really wanted the public to have an experience with Frida’s life, so we are not looking at it from a historical distance, we are not having interviews with experts, we are not seeing The Blue House as it is seen now. We are trying to make the public feel Frida as if she were still alive.”