‘Frida’ Director Carla Gutierrez Wanted Audience To Feel Kahlo’s Emotions – Contenders Documentary

deadline.com:

Frida is not just a documentary about the art and life of Frida Kahlo. Director Carla Gutierrez wanted to use the tools of the format to capture Kahlo’s emotions.

Those tools included narration, archival material, score and the creative touch of animating Kahlo’s paintings. “We wanted to make sure that the audience in a way kind of physically or literally dove into Frida’s heart and into her pool of emotions and was able to like swim in there with her,” Gutierrez said during a conversation for Deadline’s awards-season event Contenders Documentary. “Bringing her art into this filmic space, cinematic space, was really key to really hearing in a way her heart beat and her emotions go through her veins.” Gutierrez credits her animation department in Mexico City on their collaboration.

As well, Katia Maguire led the production team to gather archival material in Mexico, including about the 1925 cable car accident Kahlo survived, to show viewers Mexico as the artist lived it. “You’re seeing her eyes looking at us in her paintings,” Gutierrez said. “We wanted the audience to also look at her universe through her eyes.

A lot of those accidents, unfortunately, happened in Mexico City. So we found some really gruesome images of what happened after those accidents.” Kahlo speaks in the film too, via the voice of Fernanda Echevarria, in Spanish with English subtitles.