Kristy Guevara-Flanagan

by Rachel Bryant Frye

I am a UCD student, a feminist, a mother of one, and very soon to be two children in February, and I aspire to make the type of insightful, thoughtful and empowering female-centric documentaries that Kristy Guevara-Flanagan has made. So it was easy for me to instantly feel connected to her films. I especially identified with her recent project, Mothertime, a one hour experimental piece chronicling some of the more routine, sometimes banal, but intimate exchanges between mother and daughter as Kristy and her delightful toddler took turns wearing and activating a GoPro camera remotely to reveal a real time discursive portrait of modern day motherhood and domesticity. Not only was this was a project to which I related both stylistically, and in terms of having a toddler daughter with whom I interact in a very similar way, it was especially amusing to see that Kristy had the same exact Trader Joe’s Coffee, the same high chair, and many familiar items related to mother/child-hood that are seen scattered throughout both of our domestic landscapes.

So it was no wonder that I went in to this interview having watched all her (readily available) projects and feeling as though we were old friends…. I knew for instance, that Kristy was originally from Southern California, but lived in the Bay Area for many years where she got her MFA in Film Studies from San Francisco State University, but that she recently moved back to Los Angeles where she is teaching courses about documentary filmmaking at UCLA.

Rachel Bryant Frye: Can we start with a little bit about your background as a filmmaker? How did you become interested in making films?

Kristy Guevara-Flanagan: I first became interested in film in high school when I took an art class at a local rec center back when they still taught Super 8. I was the only student and had a really great experience- it was partly just that I was getting all of the attention, but this German film teacher, Alfonso, was a real artist and just treated me with such respect. He was really interested in helping me realize my vision, and that process just totally blew my mind at that age. I think I've been hooked ever since.

I kind of joke that if it had been a ceramicist, I probably would have gone on to do that, because it was almost just more about having an adult take me seriously, and being able to think about myself as an artist, and beginning to take on that lens as I walked through the world was really something. It was really empowering.

RBF: Did you always know that you wanted to make movies about women, and issues important to women?

KGF: I don't think it was until I was in grad school that it started to become more of a focus, so it took a little bit more maturity. I think it was clear that I was interested in documentary and experimental stuff more than anything from an earlier age, even when I was doing that little class in high school, I just wanted to go out there and observe the world and document it in someway.

RBF: Did you have a favorite documentary at that age?

KGF: No, I'm not sure I really knew what documentary was, but I was at a pretty young age interested in avant-garde stuff- I happened to live near a video store, back when there were video stores, and was really attracted to the weird stuff.

RBF: How do you define the terms “experimental” and “feminist”? How are those terms significant to your interests or body of work?

KGF: Experimental, when it comes to filmmaking, I think something that's really in a way pushing against the dominant modes of storytelling, representation, and visualization. I think the genre of experimental of course is very broad, from super abstract or camera-less films to "What Happened to Her," which is still representational, it's not that far out there in terms of truly experimental styles of filmmaking.

For me, my interests are probably more in whittling down the avant-garde: Kenneth Angler and Andy Warhol and some of the interesting feminist performance artists and filmmakers like Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Ana Mendieta and stuff from the seventies. I haven't really done a lot of stuff that focuses on the body in the way that they have, but I've definitely taken a lot of inspiration from them.

Feminist is of course is a term that can be applied to many realms, not just film, so, kind of thinking in broad strokes, I see feminism as standing up for women's rights, and being critical of the kinds of ideologies that are put out there in the storytelling realm; some of the realms that I'm interested in, film, art and theater and always just thinking from a gendered perspective: “where are the women and what's going on with that character?” A lot of it is just interpreting what I see and trying to push back against that and offer alternate versions of women's stories. To me it's pretty broad, it's just so intrinsic as well.

RBF: Do you identify as experimental or feminist filmmaker? Why or Why not?

KGF: I definitely am a feminist and when it comes to filmmaking, I often use the term "feminist lens.” I’m probably a little bit more of a documentary filmmaker who uses feminist techniques.

I think most of my work is a response, a dialogue, or even a reaction to the way I see stories being told. That's kind of central to my practice, that dialogue, and the push and pull. I think that's also why I consider myself more of a documentary filmmaker.

I'm really interested in form, in the form that each film will take, and it's a little unique that I make films that look and feel so different, because for me, I sort of approach each concept trying to find a form that will match, and is best suited to it.

So I guess I would have to be a feminist because there's just no other choice, and because of that sort of central concern of mine that is this conversation with the dominant modes of storytelling.

El Corrido De Cecilia Rios

1998

RBF: Would you mind sharing the circumstances that prompted you to make El Corrido de Cecilia Rios, the true story of a 15 year old girl who was raped and murdered as she was taking a shortcut home through an elementary school campus?

KGF: That was my first project that I did in grad school, and prior to grad school, I was working as a tutor and teacher liaison in the school districts where Cecilia Rios was murdered, the Richmond school district. It happened when I was in grad school and was working for the news as an editor, so those two things really informed that piece.

I made El Corrido a year after she [Cecilia Rios] had been killed. Partly it was a project born out of a school assignment to observe a place, and I observed the spot where she'd been killed, and I was working in the school district, so the fact that her body had been found in an elementary school, in a stairwell and that she herself was a high school student so largely impacted the youth of that community. It was crazy.

I really witnessed that firsthand and I just thought of the immensity or the gravity of this location and what that meant that it was an area that kids frequently traverse and she herself had used as a shortcut. So I was very intrigued by how the youth were affected by this, and thinking perhaps because it was a year, later they could reflect upon it and it wasn't going to be as traumatic for them to reflect on it.

And at the same time thinking about how sensational the news can be.

I was grappling with the fact that I was working in the news, and it's sort of like five seconds and then on to the next. The way they, at that particular time, were handling what they thought was a minority on minority crime and gang violence in certain type of communities, which was always I thought sensationalized, so taking a cue from that and again trying to do something different and give the youth the space to open up and reflect, but in a style that was like that of an elegy in the corrido itself, using a mythic form of remembrance and from a community's perspective, also like a Greek Chorus, you know to kind of claim and own this- these were all the things that I was interested in that piece.

RBF: I’ve been reading about Jay Francisco Lopez’s biopic about Cecilia’s story that premiered last weekend at the New York Latino Film Festival after several years of crowdfunding, various fundraising endeavors, and even the parents of Cecilia raising funds by selling tamales and organizing car washes. Are you familiar with this project or have you been following the progress of “Love, Cecy”?

KGF: Yeah! He reached out to me a long time ago, and he's from the community. I just thought, it's so crazy that, I don't think he was born when that happened, but he wanted to make a story about it anyway. He stuck to it, and the film actually just premiered, I haven't seen it. I hope he shares it with me at some point. He and I did have conversations about it. He wanted to use my footage, but I was like "it's 16mm, it's not hi-def, I don't think it's really going to do much for you.”

Originally he wanted to incorporate some of the news footage, so he must have chopped it down or done it differently.

I'm very curious about the piece.

RBF: What are some things you would hope to see conveyed (or not) about her story?

KGF: I guess I didn't quite understand why it might be relevant now, and that kind of remains to be seen, I don't know what his angles on her story might be.

I do think it’s good that it was a kid of color from the community making the film, so I'm hopeful… there's obviously something that resonates with him coming from a different generation, from a younger generation, I don't know what it is, but I’d like to see it and find out.

Going on 13:

2008

RBF: How did you go about finding the four adolescent girl subjects featured in your coming of age documentary Going on 13?

KGF: Going on 13 was a film that I had directed with Dawn Valdez and we made it right out of film school. I wanted to do something about girls and I wanted it to be longitudinal- to follow girls over a long period of time, and my friend Dawn was a social worker, so I thought that would be a really important collaboration through which to approach schools, families and children. It was also important to have somebody that is so deeply concerned with the social perspective not just another filmmaker.

We were very deliberate in all aspects of how we reached out to the kids in the community in that we first contacted schools that were part of the small schools movement at the time, who were really just trying to make the public school system work better and have a little bit more control over how they taught prior to the big charter movement. Once we decided the areas of the schools that would reflect the greatest diversity in the East Bay in Northern California, we realized there would be great girls in every classroom, we just needed access to the schools first.

We were very transparent about what our intentions were. We wanted to make a film about young girls struggling through this particular time period, also make sure it was diverse, and it was important to have them be in the public school system.

So we got permission to shoot in the classrooms and really hung out quite a bit just getting the lay of the land and kind of doing field research like anthropologists. What was going on in the fourth grade classroom? What were the concerns of the kids there? What was the mood?

We interviewed all of the girls in two classes then we found the core group, each had a different sort of family life, and thinking about them in combination, how it would tell a universal or global story about that kind of urban community.

We did start out with six girls and the film had four, so it was sort of knowing that anything can happen, we might want to cast a little bit wider than what we end up with. One girl was in a divorced family, and her father was a lawyer and wasn't into it, and then the other girl, it became clear that she was just kind of embarrassed to have the camera around her, and it was stressing her out, so we had a conversation with her basically asking if she really wanted to participate, or if it was just too much, so we stopped filming her.

Then with the rest of girls, it was also forming relationships with their families and being transparent with their families as well, because the girls didn't really know what it means to be filmed for four years and really only a parent can consent to that.

I always try to approach documentary filmmaking with informed consent, I try to help them as best as they can understand what the impact is going to be, what the filming process is going to be, and what we ultimately hope to demonstrate.

RBF: Have you followed up with the girls in recent years, or "women" I guess they are now?

KGF: Yes they're women, grown women now! Dawn is in touch with one of them more than I am. They live near each other and I'm friends with a couple on Facebook, actually I am friends with all but one who's not on Facebook.

From the festival launch to two years later we did a lot of screenings with the girls and their families, and tried to bring them around to those events as much as possible. That’s what people wanted. We went to schools, we went to festivals,we did press together, we did a lot together, and that was a really great process.

RBF: How do you think participating in the film affected their lives?

KGF: That's an interesting question. I mean I think that because the media market is much more saturated than it once was, it's not like everybody in the world saw that film and they were noticed walking down the street. So that kind of notoriety didn't happen. They weren't affected publicly in that way, but it's still hard to know.

One of the girls had a hard time with it, and she's the one you see having some family problems with her mom having mental health concerns in the film. It was hard for her because the film shows some of the difficulties of her life and her mom's struggle and that's what she's remembered for, and so she has not been as proud of it. Which is hard for us as filmmakers.

We really tried to have their best interests, and share her story with other girls and families that may have similar issues in their lives, but she was still very young of course when it came out, and she's a young woman now, and it's like this record of hard time in her life. I think that's been difficult for her to negotiate- because of that, difficult for us as well.

RBF: Is she doing ok in life now?

KGF: Oh yeah, she's doing great, they all are!

Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines

2012

RBF: I read in a previous interview on Indie Wire about “Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Superheroines” that it was especially difficult to find funding for an “arts and humanity” documentary “by and for women,” how do you think things would be different if you were making this documentary today, with Wonder Woman having such a moment in popular culture? Do you think you would still feel compelled to make such a documentary today?

KGF: I probably wouldn't. Yeah. That's a good question. On the one hand, I think it's still a hard sell for documentaries that don't have a strong, almost social crisis. You can imagine all those binders with slate of films to choose from, and some obviously feel much more urgent and consequential- so I don't think that has changed, and I don't think that films where gender is as broadly interpreted as that film, and the film that I'm working on now necessarily rise to that level of being of great urgency.

Which is I think unfortunate, because even though it is not as high of stakes, there's certainly people wrestling with this, obviously with the sexual harassment that's surfacing right now in Hollywood, it's definitely on everyone's minds. So it remains to be seen.

I may not have made the film if the Wonder Woman feature had already come out, because that was part of the point of the documentary- that there hadn't been a real super heroine feature. There’s still it's only one, and it's crazy that it's taken this long.

RBF: Were there aspects of the Wonder Woman feature that you wish they would have done differently?

KGF: Yeah, I think there should have been more female characters in the rest of the film. That's probably my biggest question was where are they? Even the Etta Camby Character wasn't very interesting and didn't really go anywhere. There was a real opportunity with the Suffragette movement, which they kind of alluded to but I think they could have done some interesting things with that, but they didn't. I think I would have liked to see a woman play Wonder Woman who physically was a little more strong looking, but I thought she did a good job.

RBF: You had some very high profile interviews in Wonder Women: Gloria Steinem, Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner, Jane Espensen, Kathleen Hanna… What was the process of getting these people to sign on, and do you have any advice about things you learned during the process for beginning documentary makers?

KGF: That kind of stuff is so hard! I'm dealing with it all over again on this project. It's really really hard to get these interviews. People are just being asked all of the time, and they have agents and publicists. I didn't know any of them, so a lot of effort was put forth to get all of those people.

A lot went into trying to ask everyone we knew, and every funder if they had a personal connection- since going through the publicist and agents rarely does anything.

It took a long time to get Gloria Steinem, and that was because one of our funders, Chicken and Egg, finally just said "You know, I'm one of the founders of a funding entity, I'm friends with her, and I walk with her on Sundays, maybe I'll just hand her your packet.”

And then boom, we got the interview and that was pretty far into the production process. So it kind of takes this great leap of faith, because even with Lynda Carter we didn't get that right away, and if we didn't have an interview with Lynda Carter, we didn't have a film. So you kind of have to have faith, and you'll get to the people that you need to get to that are the most critical assets for the production. I went to comic conventions and tracked down Lindsay Wagner, and just filmed her on the site, of course that didn't really look very good, but I was able to make that connection and she sort of knew who I was.

So then when I reached out to Lynda Carter, I was able to say "we filmed Lindsay and of course we really want to film you."

Those aren't even the most famous people in Hollywood, but they're difficult enough to get to. So it was all really tough. Kathleen Hanna was really difficult to get too. We ended up going through a friend of a friend, and eventually getting to the Riot Girls. I had some connections with some of the Riot Girls that were on the West Coast in the Portland area, and finally they were just like, "you should talk to Kathleen Hanna if that's what you want to talk about" so we brokered that into production since she was on the East Coast, and with all of these people you get a very finite amount of time.

Who knows if they even watched the finished film. You're just so inconsequential compared to all of the things that they're up to.

It's humbling.

RBF: So your advice for trying to get interviews would be to have tenacity?

KGF: Tenacity, and just make sure you need it for the project, because it does take a lot of energy. Some people are well connected, so if you're one of those people, you'll have better luck. But generally, it's really hard since documentary isn't really of interest to Hollywood people, they're generally looking for larger audiences and money.

RBF: Do you offer any kind of incentive or anything?

KGF: That's why it's a hard ask, you can't pay them, so you have to sell them on the film and the statement the film is making. It's sometimes easier to get interviews for environmental projects, but then they may not have any real relationship and it's just random celebrities talking about the environment.

RBF: Have you ever thought about what your ideal super heroine role model would be like?

KGF: I definitely think we need some politicians or some super heroic politicians to advocate for women, or for everyone really at this point in time. The idea that they are there for humanity is a nice little plot device, and I can see why super heroes continue to fascinate. I don't follow them so much anymore.

RBF: Who are some of your your real life heroines?

KGF: It's funny when the tables are turned. I would ask that question in interviews and everyone would say their mom.

It's hard to think of any particular ones right now, but what always intrigues me is women who have done something that is an nontraditional pursuit for a woman, that always kind of sparks my interests.

There's a mom here at UCLA who's an astrophysicist and renowned for studying black holes, to me, that's so amazing! How do you pursue that, you know? Women in the sciences that are really trying to blaze the trail, because women have not gotten very far in the science in general. So that always piques my interests.

Also, advocates for women and children, and politicians who are really trying to advocate for the underrepresented, like Elizabeth Warren. There's a new Prime Minister in New Zealand who's a woman in the Labor Party who I’ve been reading about that seems really exciting.

Personally I'm interested in storytellers who have historically or are presently doing really interesting things, like Jill Soloway, I think is really interesting, so was Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler, or other science fiction writers who were doing their thing when nobody else was. Especially Octavia Butler, somebody has to be making a film about her!

Women artists as well, I'll always look to women whose work was unabashed and were adamant about the pursuit of their quests- whether or not it’s performance based art, conceptual, or mainstream modes of storytelling.

What Happened to Her

2016

RBF: (I think I mentioned that in recent years I’ve become weirdly obsessed with murder mysteries and crime dramas with female protagonists)

During your research for What Happened to Her did you notice any differences in the formulas and tropes emerging in the more female-centric crime dramas developed by women like Jane Campion, or The Killing’s Veena Sud, that feature strong dynamic female leads? Or have you avoided the genre because of the traditionally graphic and exploitative depictions of female victims?

KGF: Sort of like the superhero genre, I was not a big fan before I started making the Wonder Woman documentary, I wasn't versed in superhero mythology, and wasn't a big fan and it's kind of similar, I'm just not a big thriller fan, and forensic investigations were not something I'd actually sit down and watch- but I don't mind that, I like sort of suddenly becoming an expert and trying to read and know everything, and getting into it nonetheless, as kind of an outsider. Then being able to appreciate it for what it has to offer and see why people are so excited by it- it was kind of a similar process. I am definitely now interested in these stories in a way that I wasn't before.

RBF: Do you think there’s perhaps a potential to flip the script so to speak using women made crime dramas to subvert the male gaze and re-humanize female victims? Or would that be using the “master’s tools” to dismantle his own house as Audre Lorde might say?

KGF: In this case, I don't think there's anything that precludes not being able to do something that is feminist and not exploitative. I haven't seen the newest Top of the Lake, but I was sad to hear that it has a dead body in it... I thought the first one was doing something different.

KGF: I think definitely David Lynch had something to do with it. His work has always struck me as showing the brutalization and penetration of the dead body, especially the female corpse in Twin Peaks.

I think it was a concept that was germinating over a long period, and it was a matter of saying "now it’s time to sit here and piece all of these images together

and see what they tell me.” It was definitely something that was percolating for awhile. I don't think there was a moment where something drew the line that made me sit down and do the work. But when I was doing the project, I was definitely like "wow" with a few scenes.

Mothertime

2017

RBF: When you set out to make Mothertime, what were some of the things that you hoped to communicate about motherhood? Did you have any expectations about the types of things you wanted to capture, the structure or the timeframe? Or was it a “let’s just turn the camera’s on and see what happens type of approach”?

KGF: Mothertime was a project where I was working within my constraints. I was very inspired by some of the women artists who were out there that were positioning motherhood as a site of intellectual and artistic exploration, and kind of owning the creative moments that come out of it. I would find threads of creativity from within their work.

There's this woman that called her maternity leave an "Artist's Residency in Motherhood" and I just sort of embraced that idea and thought it was wonderful.

I knew that I wanted to use this little camera and do something because I don't have much bandwidth, so for these types of circumstances, I think the diary form is good- just filming a little bit here and there over a long period.

I was really inspired by Mary Kelly who was an artist in the seventies that did something similar where she kept this diary and she used images of soiled diapers, and framed them in a way (I think she cleaned them), but she noted what happened each day with little observations, as well as almost medically documenting some of the stuff that happened. People were like "what the hell is this?" when the saw it, but it has since become a very key feminist work, especially because there are not many works revolving around motherhood, since it's often seen as being "too domestic" to explore, so I just wanted to try to own that domesticity and own the spirit of motherhood.

It's definitely one of my more experimental works in that it's a very experiential piece. I just wanted people to experience certain aspects of parenting sensorially so, really through sound and texture. I was just really interested in the concept of me wearing the camera, and then my daughter wearing it, and cutting it all together and discovering what it might look like. Especially because you're so tethered to your child at those ages, and I wanted to have the viewer experience that as much as they could. Both the chaos and the tethered-ness aspects.

RBF: You seem so patient in your mother/daughter interactions, and Zora seems like such an amazing listener, especially for how young she was, were these interactions typical examples of your everyday life, or did having the camera present bring out your better qualities? (if so, I might record the next decade or so)

KGF: I know, it's so funny that a lot of the moms who saw it were like "that looks nothing like my motherhood experience,” and I showed it to single moms and they felt like it was so un-chaotic. But really the viewer is seeing the times when I could film, so it might feel like I'm speaking to a non-single mothering audience, because it might not feel as familiar, obviously some of it will feel very familiar, but it was a lot of in-between moments where we managed to partner together.

RBF: Do you have any other upcoming projects or anything in progress?

KGF: The big one that I'm working on is a feature that we're developing is in a way a sequel to "What Happened to Her" that looks at images of women in film and television, but revolves around nudity, sex and sexuality, so that's really kind of broad and is getting to be a pretty big project. I'm looking at actresses in a range of ages and stages, and also body doubles. I hope to speak with lawyers who can talk about nudity clauses and SAG, some of the by-laws and really kind of explore from a lot of different angles, what it takes to perform nude and then of course the feminist perspective, like what are the implications of that.

RBF: Have you come across any crazy stories about actresses on set having bad experiences when acting in nude scenes?

KGF: Well I think that there's some of that, or women of a certain age being pressured to do nudity or learning how to negotiate nudity that may feel gratuitous, then there's some stories of stars after forty or having kids actually finding it empowering, as though they’re contributing to alternate visions of femininity. I’m also talking with directors like Jill Soloway or Lena Dunham who are considering what a female gaze might look like, and how one might show something very sexual, but with different perspective- trying not to visually fall into more of the exploitative stereotypes, which is kind of hard, there's sort of a style of what is sexy because we're used to seeing that style, so breaking the mold from that is interesting.

I'm hoping it will be more nuanced than just a bunch of stories about being exploited, but also to lay bare a little bit just how much goes into this particular process of filmmaking. Not dissimilar to what it's like to play a dead body- they have to go into makeup for many hours and how it must feel when you have to be on set in a bathrobe and have a closed set, and to really have an ally in the makeup artist because they're the ones kind of making sure that parts of the body aren't getting caught on screen that you negotiated out of, and a lot of different considerations.

It’s always interesting to interact with an artist when you’ve had the chance to get to know them, their circumstances and their personalities through research and viewing their autobiographical work- but when you finally come face to face (or Skype to Skype as our interview was), you are met with the realization that they have no idea who you are. Of course, in these situations, I often feel a strange obligation to, perhaps, overshare details of my life to avoid feeling like a totally obsessed stalker or fan girl for knowing so many details about their life. However, then I’m left feeling even more silly for thinking that they want to spend their valuable time hearing about my life. Such is navigating the modern world of connectivity, the internet, and experimental films. Nevertheless, it was super inspiring to learn about Kristy, and her truly interesting body of feminist themed work. It was a privilege to pick the brain of such an amazingly engaged and accomplished documentary filmmaker, even if I do feel like a bit of a silly fan girl. I’m so looking forward to seeing what comes next! -- Rachel Bryant Frye

This interview was published to this archive on December 10th, 2017.

To learn more about the work of Kristy Guevara-Flanagan visit: http://www.chuparosafilms.com/