Mickey’, the second documentary by Dano Garcia, a filmmaker from Mazatlan, Mexico, debuted this week at the South By SouthWest (SXSW) festival.
The film is an exploration of memory, identity and community through the memories and visual archives of Mickey Cundapí, Garcia’s childhood friend and transgender artist, also known as Mis$ Mickey.
With a non-linear and fluid structure, ‘Mickey’ follows the protagonist’s childhood and adolescence in Sinaloa: her complex family relationship, her experiences in a Catholic school, the development of her trans identity and her friendship with Garcia.
The documentary, which began filming more than 10 years ago, is a “process of revisiting the past, transforming it into an act of liberation,” according to García in an interview with EFE.
In ‘Mickey’, the past merges with the present, the digital world with physical reality, the symbolic and the explicit, offering the viewer a fluid way of approaching the story of the protagonist, in a feature film that presents itself as a free, emotional creation that resists entering into schemes.
The film, said Cundapí, is inspired by a diary of memories that she began to write at the same time she and García started this project.
“It was a complex, bittersweet process, but it had to happen; I think it helped me heal and I hope that, whoever sees it, it can help them too, because it is a very personal archive,” said the artist.
Documentary Mickey: “We are making history”.
‘Mickey’ interweaves interviews in the now with the protagonist and her family, with videos from her personal archive, recorded with cell phones and digital cameras from the early 2000s and social media graphics.
The image of teenage Mis$ Mickey, answering questions from her followers on networks or telling that she wants to do makeup tutorials is mixed with that of the current woman, standing in front of the road travelled.
“From a very young age, I grew up with those devices where you can record yourself, take videos, selfies, and I always had that pleasure of recording myself. I somehow thought ‘I want to remember my life,'” Mickey reflected.
Now, he added, he sees it as important to encourage new generations of people to do the same: “As trans people we are making history and we need to have an archive of that.”
For García, capturing his and Mickey’s transition process on the big screen is “very valuable” because it superimposes his own voice on the experiences of the past.
“Your voice is unique and valuable and I think that’s the most beautiful thing about the documentary, that it has the power of self-determination and of what it means to make trans cinema as well,” she added. “Freedom is contagious and a little bit Mickey is (too), it’s contagious to all of us and you see that in the film.”
This is the second documentary by Garcia, whose first feature film ‘Kings of Nowhere’, released in 2015 received several awards, including the Audience Award at SXSW and Golden Eye at the Zurich Film Festival.
SXSW will run through March 18, with an ambitious lineup that includes more than 100 music projects presented in 60 concert venues across the city, some 120 feature films – including world premieres – and dozens of short films.
This year marks the 40th edition of SXSW, which began in 1987 and attracts thousands of visitors in a mix of established and emerging artists, along with leaders in the technology sector and the media, reported Agencia EFE.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
