Interview With "Frida" Director Carla Gutierrez

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[00:00:58] You are listening to the next best picture podcast and this is Nadia D'Alamanté's interview

[00:01:04] with a director for the documentary film Freedom.

[00:01:07] Carla Gutierrez.

[00:01:08] I miss you, because I'm what I know better.

[00:01:20] I'll paint what I want with my own eyes and nothing else.

[00:01:28] The truck that I'm wearing is for all the guests.

[00:01:32] Hi Carla, how are you?

[00:01:34] Good, how are you doing?

[00:01:35] Good, good thank you.

[00:01:37] This is Nadia with next best picture.

[00:01:39] It's really, really lovely to meet you.

[00:01:41] Thank you so much for your time.

[00:01:43] I'm very excited to be here and to talk to you about your wonderful documentary

[00:01:48] and directorial debut, Freedom,

[00:01:50] which is such a rich achievement.

[00:01:52] There's so much to dive into.

[00:01:55] And I just wanted to start by seeing.

[00:01:57] So your work as a documentary editor has Sean Alight on so many trailblazing women

[00:02:02] from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and RBG to Julia Child and Julia.

[00:02:06] And now we have this very intimate portrait of this iconic surrealist artist, Frida Kahlo.

[00:02:14] Could you start by telling us about your connection to Frida and what sparked your decision

[00:02:20] to direct this film?

[00:02:22] So the idea for the film came about, I would say probably three years ago.

[00:02:29] But I have had a personal relationship with Frida's art for over 20 years.

[00:02:36] I discovered her in college and I became obsessed.

[00:02:40] And I know that I'm only one of millions of people who have this experience with her paintings.

[00:02:48] But yeah, when I was in college, I was a young immigrant and I saw the painting

[00:02:54] that she has of herself between the United States and Mexico.

[00:02:58] And it's a painting actually that you see in the film when she's, you know,

[00:03:02] she's actually, you know, not happy to be in the United States anymore.

[00:03:07] And I found myself, you know, my feelings and about moving from Latin America to the United States.

[00:03:16] And, you know, this country which has given me so much but wasn't always welcoming.

[00:03:22] I was very much feeling the same way that she painted that, you know, that canvas like, you know,

[00:03:28] this mixed feelings about my new place and then really longing for my home.

[00:03:33] And and I really saw myself reflected in it.

[00:03:37] So throughout the years, I've been going back to her art

[00:03:41] and I was seeing my emotions in a lot of different, you know, different paintings that I've seen of hers.

[00:03:47] Which is extraordinary because it is her face that we see.

[00:03:50] They're all mostly self portraits, but she has disability of like showing us her internal,

[00:03:57] you know, this emotional state that I think really connects with our own.

[00:04:03] So so yeah, so that was kind of the beginning of the beginning of my story with freedom.

[00:04:08] But when I came to the idea of making a film, I was you know, already mid-age, my show woman who has lived a lot.

[00:04:17] And also with a lot of experience in editing, bringing, you know,

[00:04:23] bringing the stories of figures sometimes, you know, historical figures to life.

[00:04:29] So I gave, I felt that I was coming into this project with this, you know,

[00:04:33] experience to give justice to free us, to free us on voice and words.

[00:04:39] And I also saw an opportunity to really focus on her own voice,

[00:04:44] which I had not seen, you know, I had not seen a documentary really do that really allowed her to tell her own story.

[00:04:52] So I thought that there was actually a need, you know, there's been a lot of things done about her,

[00:04:57] but there was a need to get a perspective of freedom that was this intimate.

[00:05:02] And it was really carried by her own voice.

[00:05:05] So so I really wanted to do it immediately.

[00:05:09] Yes, absolutely.

[00:05:10] And you did such an incredible job of painting that intimate picture because I feel like freedom's image has become such a huge symbol beyond herself.

[00:05:19] She really is everywhere.

[00:05:21] And even before this interview, I passed by a free to grocery market with her image as the reference sign.

[00:05:27] So she really is, she really is everywhere.

[00:05:30] And I've loved that in this documentary, you visualize her beyond her iconic status.

[00:05:35] We're really getting to know the human being, her thoughts, her emotions, her personality, her humor.

[00:05:41] And it did feel kind of like watching a diary come to life.

[00:05:45] Did you feel a sense of responsibility or pressure in interpreting freedom in this particular intimate way?

[00:05:54] Of course, I mean, I, you know, we anchor this project on a lot of research.

[00:06:01] But I feel that the research gave us the, you know, kind of the freedom to take creative risks and the creative risks that, you know, I feel that we took was to really trust that we wanted to make this film about her emotions and not necessarily like a list of things that she accomplished in life or things that happened in her life.

[00:06:24] So, so you know, I think we went for it.

[00:06:27] But, but I do remember early on thinking, you know, I'm going to be immersed in so much research that I might feel the weight of everything that happened in her life.

[00:06:38] And I might have a hard time kind of letting go for the service of the story that we were telling, you know, to maybe let go of some details.

[00:06:46] So I made the decision quickly to, you know, to bring support since I was, you know, wearing two hats as a both director as an editor.

[00:06:56] Let me get a really great creative producer and also an amazing supervising editor on my producers at the my wire, supervising editors David Tick, who will help me, you know, kind of like be able to step back and really see.

[00:07:12] And remind myself of like how are we making this film.

[00:07:17] What we want to is really to capture the spirit of this woman, the emotion of this woman, the texture of her personality.

[00:07:24] So let's make sure that we really make those take those risks and really, you know, make those bold decisions to do that.

[00:07:32] And to really capture intimacy with her right and not feel the responsibility so much of your responsibility to add.

[00:07:42] To include everything about her life that you know that everybody knows about yeah.

[00:07:49] Yeah, and I think part of what captures that spirit so well is also the narration by Fernanda Achavariya Gilbert Barrow.

[00:07:57] It's very, very brilliant and evocative and I was wondering which qualities you were kind of looking for in deciding on or visualizing the best voice to represent Frida.

[00:08:09] The really funny thing is that you know her voice and oh my god what a blessing he was to find Fernanda because she just brought this layer complex beautiful, beautiful performance.

[00:08:24] And really I think embodied Frida's spirit as we were looking to do.

[00:08:29] And really is that we had to put the film together without our actress to be able to like have a final voice over and I had to read Frida's voice.

[00:08:41] My established was just so you know it was just terrible because first I knew that we could get a much better performance but also.

[00:08:49] Yeah, I mean the voice all the time was you know with a proven accent to from Peru not Mexico so yeah I mean the but you know looking for Fernanda was one thing we were looking for.

[00:09:02] We had descriptions of Frida's voice but we did not want to only look for kind of like the quality of her voice the perfect quality right.

[00:09:12] But we were really looking for somebody that could give us a performance that could really capture Frida's maturity and and the weight of you know a life that had gone through a lot of suffering and a lot of loss.

[00:09:26] But you know somebody a voice that had not lost that curiosity and freshness and and passionate you know like view of the world that she she really has throughout her entire life but like that childish curiosity and rebellious spirit that you you really feel when she was she's a little girl and she's you know a teenager.

[00:09:54] And Fernanda just came with that in her first audition just her performance and then when we got together with her to record.

[00:10:02] The idea was to again be able to like capture really intimate kind of like you know Frida's telling telling us her secrets so the way we did it is that I got pretty close to her for Nanda and that you know imagine if Frida is like.

[00:10:17] You know laying on her bed towards the end of her life and recollecting her emotions throughout her life and telling a good friend of secrets so that's you know that was kind of like the first approach that we had for or they were calling off the voice or.

[00:10:34] Yeah is she her voice really adds so much layers to the footage that you're seeing the photography that you're seeing and I mean the documentary itself is it's like a treasure chest of archival material and.

[00:10:49] I'd love to hear more about the research process for this where was the first place where do you start with with so much kind of around you and did you have easy access for all the footage that that ended up into the film.

[00:11:02] So I mean access to archival is always like a long process that you have to be very disciplined and you know persist.

[00:11:11] To be able to get the access especially when you discover like you know magical things are there she's like oh this mask going to the film.

[00:11:19] The first task was to really get all of her writings you know I telling people that it wasn't that obvious at the beginning that she could carry all of her story.

[00:11:31] I knew that she could tell us quite a bit of her life but I thought that I was going to be relying on other people's voice a little bit more but she actually took over and that was because we.

[00:11:44] You know created the most comprehensive database of freedom's writing there might be academics that have done that but they're not public like there's no one single book that carries all of her writings in one place so we tracked a lot of the academic work that had been done and then went to the different collections to get the writings and again access from the different collections were you know we're different sometimes.

[00:12:09] We could get access but it would take a really long time to actually get the letters and there was you know some convincing that we had to do with other collections so.

[00:12:19] So that was the you know that was kind of like the really heavy you know research that we did and then we read everything my you know kind of like our core team my producer associate producer and I.

[00:12:34] Read everything like you know I would say hundreds and hundreds of documents with her writing and then their kind of research was a whole other thing we had a fantastic archival producer in Mexico who physically went to a lot of the sources because you know a lot of the archival sources in Mexico they don't have things digitized so we actually got you know imagery in our film that had never been digitized before.

[00:13:03] Which was really exciting for us and then again all the all the photos of free does are you know everywhere in the world in different collections and we just you know wanted to be able to get every picture that we could as we were telling the story and then curated you know with as much flexibility as we could so yeah it's.

[00:13:29] We didn't have any shooting we didn't do any contemporary interviews so all of our energies in you know our shooting was really collecting and gathering all the archival either the voice over or the visual archival that we got.

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[00:14:07] Go to your happy place for a happy price go to your happy price price line yeah it's really incredible how in that collection you also get the sense as if you were that freedom was also a very powerful writer

[00:14:23] and her your film really shows her sharp and insightful way with words which I loved as well and I was wondering in that whole process of the research was there any particular material you discovered about free that took you by surprise.

[00:14:40] You know my obsession with freedom when I was a young woman was deep.

[00:14:45] So I knew every pretty much every detail of her life had read about I had read a lot about you know what academics think about her paintings and how those paintings were tied to things about her life or her feelings in her life but a lot of the stuff that I read of her words where you know long quotes that people added in books.

[00:15:09] A lot of times I couldn't I didn't read like the entire letter that those fragments came from so actually being able to read those letters in their entirety that was was surprising like how you know kind of really getting to learn freedom as personality and even like really seeing her as this complex messy you know wonderful powerful woman.

[00:15:35] Like I remember reading the entire for the first time the entire letter was just talking about her abortion and and and just hearing the fragility in a way in her voice like that was special and that was new to me.

[00:15:52] It made me feel closer to her in a way that I had never felt reading the books about her that other people have written same with the sharp tongue that you're talking about like your humor really jumped out of the page from her from her letters and you know and other writings.

[00:16:10] In a way that I've never heard before in you know other curated material so that was also like really special like I didn't realize the extent of her you know.

[00:16:22] But Cavalari of how to insult people.

[00:16:27] You're entertaining.

[00:16:30] And that you know it again not I was not surprised about any details of what happened to her but I was really taken and kind of surprised to really hear her in a more intimate way by reading all of her writings.

[00:16:46] And there's also there's a really interesting balance here of a period piece in a contemporary piece as well it there's something about it that feels so timeless and I think one of the supporting factors to that is the sound of the documentary the score very, very lively score by the composer.

[00:17:05] Victor Hernandez some how there and the music overall I think adds a really interesting layer of expression to the archival footage which which I'm presuming must have been mostly silent a lot of the time what was it like collaborating with with Victor and getting the overall music and sound for the story.

[00:17:24] It was wonderful Victor was game just like our animators like Victor was trying to try anything and we try we went to kind of different extremes to see what would you know what would feel right as we were editing the scenes he was just kind of willing to.

[00:17:43] To even you know maybe put aside work that have been done and then like try some things from scratch but you know the conversations that we had was mainly like how do we capture free as voice.

[00:17:57] And also because we're using her word her own words we want to we wanted to make it film timeless as if this story was happening in real time right as if you were walking with her through.

[00:18:11] Through the Mexico that she was experiencing for example and so how do we make it as present as as cut as like the feeling of as contemporary as possible.

[00:18:23] And and so we talked a lot about like okay how do we capture her voice we ended up using voices in the music which is what work it seems very literal but you know the female voice like this abstract voice that sometimes felt like.

[00:18:38] You know a loud scream of environments sometimes they felt like a scream of pain.

[00:18:43] It actually really click for us and then we play with instruments that you could find in traditional Mexican music you know like trumpets but like took them out of context and and then layered you know things underneath that like added you know this kind of contemporary feeling to it and we had a lot of discussions as to you know based on what she what free that listen to back then.

[00:19:07] What would she be listening to now and we had like a lot of inspirational music playlist that you know had a lot of like you know Latin American female badass singers that are like a lot of rappers.

[00:19:24] And we actually played with a lot of Columbia which you know she would have absolutely loved with some making a Columbia that is doing some like electronic staff to it so you know so that was our inspiration and and Victor just found a way to kind of like find and make sure of those things I really felt like it really reflected free that's you know.

[00:19:49] Reveilious energy we talked about a lot about like her never choosing to contain her voice that is just like her voice which is she expressed her voice loudly and that was you know something that we really wanted to capture with the music.

[00:20:04] I know i'm explaining a lot but the sound design was just incredible too we work with our group in Mexico City and they really got into it and they went to record a lot of you know Mexican sounds not really the cars of you know now but.

[00:20:21] But they just brought Mexico alive and they we brought a lot of like textual sounds to her art so things that were abstract but we played along with the idea of ash because she's not a lot but also.

[00:20:37] But also ash is similar to the sound of like a paintbrush going against campus that is a little dry and you know a little bit of fire and then like fluids which was so present in her art you know blood.

[00:20:52] The sea you know there was there's you know the tears that she has there's like all these like very delicate fluids but we wanted to make those as abstract as possible so they were not too literal and it seemed to work really well.

[00:21:08] It absolutely and it has such a complimentary feature with the animation as well the visual language of freedom so fascinating and I imagine creatively rewarding is it gives so much fluidity to the paintings and make them feel even more so alive and interactive how did you find the animators Sophia in his Pizarra is in Renata Galindo.

[00:21:30] So Renata and Sophia we found through Instagram we.

[00:21:36] Not about both of them we actually found an artist that collaborate with them a lot and was part of the animation team.

[00:21:44] I'm going to get her name wrong Maria Lumbres and then through Maria we got in touch with Renata and Sophia because they had collaborated they had either worked together in companies or.

[00:21:59] Freelancing and they really put a collective of mostly female animators together to do this they hire a lot of young females I have pictures of them and it's just so hard war being.

[00:22:12] They were the leads and then they had a bunch of young female you know pretty young female animators working on all the details yeah I mean it was very special to have that that you know that female energy really from Mexico to work on this.

[00:22:29] So you know they knew freedom really well but from the Mexican perspective and you know our conversations was always like how to be respectful to the intention of the art but only highlight you know some emotional aspects of it so that we could guide the viewers into into free as hard and thoughts.

[00:22:50] So yeah but that was very special because we did interview a bunch of bigger companies and just having this independent collective form itself for our film.

[00:23:02] It was just wonderful because it was incredibly collaborative and you could feel the emotional investment that everybody was putting into the film.

[00:23:10] Absolutely it really pours out of each and every frame I know we're reaching the end of our time here but before we wrap I just wanted to to know now that free does being released very soon on a huge platform like prime video what is your hope for what audiences will take away from from this film.

[00:23:29] I really want audiences to get this feeling that a tharte expression and being able to be honest with you know with your own emotions and let them out is a really good thing.

[00:23:45] I think that like you know heals us and gives us comfort and give us a place of refuge for some of us is artistic expressions for others is just simply talking right but I think for for women specifically and for non binary people.

[00:24:05] We I think believe a lot of times that are internal worlds and our internal feelings are not necessarily important that we should not be talking about them or we think about them in shame if we're having difficult difficult emotions and I think that you know I hope that they see in this film an artist that was able to let her voice out and in a way that expression gave her life when she had lost so much throughout her actual life.

[00:24:35] So that's that's my little hope.

[00:24:38] Well that's an incredible incredibly powerful note to end on thank you so so much Carla congratulations on this fantastic film free to and thanks so much again for your time was such a pleasure speaking with you.

[00:24:51] Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

[00:24:53] Thanks so much Carla.

[00:24:55] Bye.

[00:24:56] Bye bye.

[00:24:57] Thank you so much for listening to Nadia Dalamate's interview with the director for the documentary film free to Carla Gutierrez here on the next best picture podcast.

[00:25:06] Free to is now available to be streamed on Amazon Prime video.

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