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Frida Kahlo, in her own words: A new documentary draws from diaries, letters

Mandalit del Barco

A new documentary about Frida Kahlo's life, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells her story using her own words and art. Leo Matiz/Fundación Leo Matiz hide caption

A new documentary about Frida Kahlo's life, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells her story using her own words and art.

"I paint myself because that's who I know the best," the late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo once wrote in her illustrated diary. So it's fitting that a new documentary about Kahlo's life, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells her story using her own words and art.

In the 70 years since Kahlo's death there have been countless efforts to revisit her complicated life, politics and artwork. Most famous is probably the 2002 fictional film starring Salma Hayek and directed by Julie Taymor that depicted Kahlo's tempestuous relationship with painter Diego Rivera. Many of these treatments have relied on actors, interviews with academics, art historians and contemporary artists. Filmmaker Carla Gutiérrez wanted a fresh take.

"Instead of having that historical distance of other people explaining [to] us what she meant with her art," Gutiérrez says, "I really wanted to give that gift to viewers of just hearing from her own words. We wanted to have the most intimate entry way into her heart and into her mind."

In Frida, Kahlo's words are taken from letters and diaries, and voiced by Mexican actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero. The film is in Spanish, with English subtitles. Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, S.C. hide caption

In Frida, Kahlo's words are taken from letters and diaries, and voiced by Mexican actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero. The film is in Spanish, with English subtitles.

In Gutiérrez's documentary Frida, Kahlo's words are taken from handwritten letters and illustrated diaries, and voiced by Mexican actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero. The film is in Spanish, with English subtitles.

Gutiérrez says she wanted to get inside Kahlo's head. "What was she thinking? what was she feeling? I felt that as a Latina, somebody that grew up in Latin America, there was this connection I have with the world that created Frida."

Gutiérrez was born in Peru and saw her first Frida Kahlo painting, as a college student in Massachusetts. It was an image of Kahlo standing with one foot in Mexico, another in the U.S. "Her impressions of the United States and yearning [for] home for Mexico, that painting really reflected my own experience," says Gutiérrez. "And then I became obsessed, like millions of people around the world."

As an editor, Gutiérrez has worked on documentaries on other what she calls "badass women", including the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg , singer Chavela Vargas and chef Julia Child . But Frida is her first film as director.

The Picture Show

Frida kahlo's private stash of pictures.

She enlisted the help of Hayden Herrera, who wrote the definitive Frida Kahlo biography in 1983 . Gutiérrez' team combed through Herrera's closets and attic, looking through her archives.

"We had a good time," Herrera says. "I basically gave them all my research material."

That included transcripts of interviews with people who knew Kahlo. One of the film's archivists, Gabriel Rivera, also scoured university libraries, museums and private collections finding photos and handwritten messages.

"These letters often have little doodles on them," Rivera says. "She would, like, do kind of lipstick kisses on these letters."

The film includes the words written by or about Kahlo's contemporaries, including Diego Rivera, who she married twice, her friends such as surrealist André Breton and her lovers such as Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky.

Some of Kahlo's paintings are slightly animated in the new film. Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, S.C. hide caption

Some of Kahlo's paintings are slightly animated in the new film.

Gabriel Rivera says they tried to follow any lead, including a tip about some footage of Kahlo dancing in the streets of New York City with a rose stem gripped in her mouth. He discovered through writings that the film canister had been left on an airplane in the late 1960s, which Rivera said is "just devastating." They tried to find lost luggage and are still hoping it shows up one day.

But there is plenty of material they did find.

In Mexico, another archivist, Adrián Gutiérrez, was able to collect some rarely seen photos and footage of Kahlo and Rivera together, and of Rivera kissing another woman. There's footage of the Mexican revolutionary Emilio Zapata and of Red Cross workers in Mexico City bandaging trolley accident victims like Kahlo, who was famously injured as a teen. She painted about that and other pain she suffered.

For the documentary, composer Víctor Hernández Stumpfhauser created a soundtrack of electronic music with folkloric guitar and the ethereal voice of his wife, Alexa Ramírez.

Hear Mandalit del Barco's 1991 radio documentary about Frida Kahlo

"The idea was that Frida herself was so ahead of her time, with her thoughts, her ideas. She was a very modern person," says Stumpfhauser. "So we thought, well, let's let's do something modern, but of course, with a with a Mexican flair."

Gutiérrez also made the decision to slightly animate some of Kahlo's paintings. Frida's open heart beats and bleeds, tears roll down her face, and when she cuts her hair in desperation over her divorce, her scissors move and pieces of her hair fall to the floor.

Latin America

As mexico capitalizes on her image, has frida kahlo become over-commercialized.

The Salma Hayek film also animated some of Kahlo's work. But Herrera says doing so in a documentary was gutsy.

"When I saw the first animation, I thought, Oh my God," says Herrera. "But then I found it really seductive and really added so much to the understanding of her paintings. I found them very astute and actually quite witty. And they brought you closer to Frida."

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Herrera says its remarkable that Frida mania is still very much alive.

"I think she would have been pleased that we're still talking about her, and I think she would have liked this film," she says. "Although seeing your own paintings animated might not be easy, but she might have given one of her big guffaws and laughed and thought it was amusing."

Herrera says this latest documentary is her favorite telling of Frida Kahlo, and is itself a work of art.

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• How the Documentary <i>Frida</i> Tells an Iconic Artist’s Story in Her Own Words

How the Documentary Frida Tells an Iconic Artist’s Story in Her Own Words

T he early 1940s self-portraits of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo that show monkeys wrapped around her neck may seem playful on the surface. In reality, Kahlo painted them during a suffocating period of her life when she was tangled in a messy divorce and desperate for work.

Frida , a new documentary produced by TIME Studios out in select theaters on March 7, explores how Kahlo endured several personal tragedies and fueled her experience into her art, creating the vibrant surrealist paintings and self-portraits that made her an iconic artist.

The film, which streams on Amazon Prime on March 14, brings Kahlo’s paintings to life through animation, archival footage, and snippets from the artist’s personal writings, billing itself as the first documentary to be told entirely through her own words as well as those of her intimates. Director Carla Gutierrez’s team scoured museums for Kahlo’s letters and used excerpts from the artist’s published diary, voiced by Fernanda Echevarría Del Rivero, in the film, which allows her sharp tongue to be put on full display. In her writings, she works through her feelings on men, the economics of art, the nature of independence, and the world. She lobs a critique at the U.S.: “Everything is about appearances but deep down it’s a pile of sh-t.”

While Kahlo’s story has been covered in biographies and films, Frida stands out for its innovative use of animation that makes her iconic paintings come alive.

Frida and self-portraits

Kahlo started painting after fracturing her pelvis in a bus crash when she was a teenager. “It wasn’t violent but silent. Slow,” she reflects in the film in voiceover. “The handrail went through me like a sword through a bull.” 

The crash altered everything. Kahlo spent months in a body cast—“bored as hell,” as she once put it—and her mother devised a makeshift easel that allowed her to paint in bed. She even hung a mirror over her daughter’s head so she could paint self portraits , which became a motif throughout her career. One reason Kahlo painted so many self portraits is because it was so painful to go out and about. “She was pretty immobile later in life, so the model that she had available was herself,” Gutierrez. In one excerpt from Kahlo’s writing that appears in the documentary, she describes her self-portraits as “the true expression of my emotions.”

How art became a lifeline for Frida Kahlo

The documentary shows that painting was a cathartic outlet for Kahlo when she was grieving after a miscarriage in 1932. In an emotional rollercoaster, she initially considered an abortion because she was afraid her body was too fragile to carry the fetus to term, but a doctor encouraged her to keep the baby. When she miscarried, she coped by painting, including the 1932 self-portrait “Henry Ford Hospital,” in which she’s lying in a pool of blood in a bed. As she once wrote, per the documentary, “the only thing I know is that I paint because I need to.” Kahlo suffered through two more miscarriages in her life.

“The paintings that came after that, that came from that loss and pain, are what actually made her find her voice as an artist,” says Gutierrez.

Then Kahlo saw painting as necessary to support herself so she wouldn’t be dependent on her husband, the artist Diego Rivera , who married her in 1929 but had several affairs with other women, including Kahlo’s own sister. “I need to paint so I can make a living. Then I will be free,” she wrote, the documentary shows. “I no longer accept a damn cent from Diego. I will never accept money from any man until I die.” The couple divorced, but Rivera begged her to marry him again, and she agreed but continued to support herself with the earnings from her work and split household expenses. The 1937 self-portrait “Memory, the Heart” reflects her disappointment with Rivera, by showing a metal band piercing her heart and imps sitting on either end like they’re on a seesaw.

Kahlo struggled to sell paintings until she passed away in 1954 at the age of 47. But what’s clear is that painting was about much more than a paycheck. Per her words in the documentary, “I’ve painted little without the slightest desire for glory or ambition, with the sole conviction to give myself pleasure, and the power to make a living with my trade. I’ve lost so many things I wanted for my life, but painting completed my life.”

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Write to Olivia B. Waxman at [email protected]

A new film tells Frida Kahlo's story in her own words for the first time

Frida Kahlo's distinct image and iconic paintings are omnipresent art symbols recognizable by most people even 70 years after her death, creating a false sense that everything there is to say about the Mexican painter has already been said.

But filmmaker Carla Gutiérrez cuts through that by doing what no one has done before in retelling the legendary artist’s story on-screen: use Kahlo's own words.

In her new documentary film "Frida," Gutiérrez uses the painter’s illustrated diary , intimate correspondence and candid print interviews to verbalize the artist’s innermost thoughts. Those emotions beautifully come to life through the lyrical animation of Kahlo's unforgettable artwork.

The combination of these elements in Gutiérrez’s feature film directorial debut results in a refreshing narrative that is as introspective as Kahlo’s paintings, most of which are self-portraits.

“I really felt that there was an intimacy that we could capture with our film and bring her in a different way to viewers,” Gutiérrez told NBC News. “For us, it was about always capturing the essence of Frida and her spirit.”

In the film, the earnest delivery of voiceover actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero as Kahlo allows the audience to feel an even bigger affinity to the artist, as if she was the one telling us her deepest secrets from her childhood and her adulthood.”

Kahlo’s voice has remained a mystery for years. There is one  recording believed to contain the sound and tone of the artist’s voice , according to Mexico’s Fonoteca Nacional, which archives old radio shows and other kinds of recordings. The Kahlo Family has denied this, saying that as far as they know, " there are no records of Frida’s voice ."

The voiceovers in "Frida" are effectively used to deliver poignant revelations about Kahlo and her life. At times, they are so personal, it almost feels like we should not be listening to them.

In her letters and diary, Kahlo wrote about the ups and downs of her relationship and marriage to acclaimed muralist Diego Rivera, her romance with the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, and some of her first memories questioning the Catholic faith, as well as gender roles.

Viewers also get to go inside Kahlo's mind as she recovered from a life-threatening accident that left her with fractures in her spine, leg, collarbone and pelvis — injures that resulted in multiple miscarriages and dozens of surgical procedures later in her life.

"There is a way of approaching biographies where you just list all the things that happen in somebody's life. But for me, it's really more important to capture the spirit of somebody and the emotional journey of that person," Gutiérrez said.

To accomplish this, she and her team got unrestricted access to research materials that have never been shown to the general public before.

It took them two years to parse through everything and create a unique cinematic experience for those who have loved Kahlo for years and others who are just learning about her legacy.

Gutiérrez said the experience of reading Kahlo's writings and getting to know about her feelings firsthand "made me really feel her a lot, in a closer way, in a more intimate way.”

“It just made her into a more normal woman that is facing the normal things that we all face,” she said.

Audiences get to see, hear and feel a multitude of Kahlos — at times rebellious and seductive, fearless and defiant, lonely and vulnerable, insecure and fragile.

As a woman who lived with physical disabilities, explored and challenged gender norms, remained politically active and lived a tumultuous love life, the film provides a satisfying ending that makes us gain a new understanding of Kahlo's last painting: a still life of watermelons with the Spanish words "Viva la Vida" (Live Life).

It brought meaning to "that symbol, that sometimes is a little bit reductive," Gutiérrez said.

"Frida" will be available to stream on Amazon starting Thursday.

Nicole Acevedo is a reporter for NBC News Digital. She reports, writes and produces stories for NBC Latino and NBCNews.com.

  This newscast is updated weekdays at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, and 6pm.  

Frida Kahlo, in her own words: A new documentary draws from diaries, letters

Updated March 20, 2024 at 9:34 AM ET

"I paint myself because that's who I know the best," the late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo once wrote in her illustrated diary. So it's fitting that a new documentary about Kahlo's life, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells her story using her own words and art.

In the 70 years since Kahlo's death there have been countless efforts to revisit her complicated life, politics and artwork. Most famous is probably the 2002 fictional film starring Salma Hayek and directed by Julie Taymor that depicted Kahlo's tempestuous relationship with painter Diego Rivera. Many of these treatments have relied on actors, interviews with academics, art historians and contemporary artists. Filmmaker Carla Gutiérrez wanted a fresh take.

"Instead of having that historical distance of other people explaining [to] us what she meant with her art," Gutiérrez says, "I really wanted to give that gift to viewers of just hearing from her own words. We wanted to have the most intimate entry way into her heart and into her mind."

In Gutiérrez's documentary Frida, Kahlo's words are taken from handwritten letters and illustrated diaries, and voiced by Mexican actor Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero. The film is in Spanish, with English subtitles.

Gutiérrez says she wanted to get inside Kahlo's head. "What was she thinking? what was she feeling? I felt that as a Latina, somebody that grew up in Latin America, there was this connection I have with the world that created Frida."

Gutiérrez was born in Peru and saw her first Frida Kahlo painting, as a college student in Massachusetts. It was an image of Kahlo standing with one foot in Mexico, another in the U.S. "Her impressions of the United States and yearning [for] home for Mexico, that painting really reflected my own experience," says Gutiérrez. "And then I became obsessed, like millions of people around the world."

As an editor, Gutiérrez has worked on documentaries on other what she calls "badass women", including the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg , singer Chavela Vargas and chef Julia Child . But Frida is her first film as director.

She enlisted the help of Hayden Herrera, who wrote the definitive Frida Kahlo biography in 1983 . Gutiérrez' team combed through Herrera's closets and attic, looking through her archives.

"We had a good time," Herrera says. "I basically gave them all my research material."

That included transcripts of interviews with people who knew Kahlo. One of the film's archivists, Gabriel Rivera, also scoured university libraries, museums and private collections finding photos and handwritten messages.

"These letters often have little doodles on them," Rivera says. "She would, like, do kind of lipstick kisses on these letters."

The film includes the words written by or about Kahlo's contemporaries, including Diego Rivera, who she married twice, her friends such as surrealist André Breton and her lovers such as Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky.

Gabriel Rivera says they tried to follow any lead, including a tip about some footage of Kahlo dancing in the streets of New York City with a rose stem gripped in her mouth. He discovered through writings that the film canister had been left on an airplane in the late 1960s, which Rivera said is "just devastating." They tried to find lost luggage and are still hoping it shows up one day.

But there is plenty of material they did find.

In Mexico, another archivist, Adrián Gutiérrez, was able to collect some rarely seen photos and footage of Kahlo and Rivera together, and of Rivera kissing another woman. There's footage of the Mexican revolutionary Emilio Zapata and of Red Cross workers in Mexico City bandaging trolley accident victims like Kahlo, who was famously injured as a teen. She painted about that and other pain she suffered.

For the documentary, composer Víctor Hernández Stumpfhauser created a soundtrack of electronic music with folkloric guitar and the ethereal voice of his wife, Alexa Ramírez.

"The idea was that Frida herself was so ahead of her time, with her thoughts, her ideas. She was a very modern person," says Stumpfhauser. "So we thought, well, let's let's do something modern, but of course, with a with a Mexican flair."

Gutiérrez also made the decision to slightly animate some of Kahlo's paintings. Frida's open heart beats and bleeds, tears roll down her face, and when she cuts her hair in desperation over her divorce, her scissors move and pieces of her hair fall to the floor.

The Salma Hayek film also animated some of Kahlo's work. But Herrera says doing so in a documentary was gutsy.

"When I saw the first animation, I thought, Oh my God," says Herrera. "But then I found it really seductive and really added so much to the understanding of her paintings. I found them very astute and actually quite witty. And they brought you closer to Frida."

Herrera says its remarkable that Frida mania is still very much alive.

"I think she would have been pleased that we're still talking about her, and I think she would have liked this film," she says. "Although seeing your own paintings animated might not be easy, but she might have given one of her big guffaws and laughed and thought it was amusing."

Herrera says this latest documentary is her favorite telling of Frida Kahlo, and is itself a work of art.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Watch Frida with a subscription on Prime Video.

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Using the artist's own words to tell her fascinating story, Frida is an absorbing documentary for novices and faithful fans alike.

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‘frida’ review: a portrait of frida kahlo that’s a triumph of deep-dive research and dynamic artistry.

The debut doc by editor Carla Gutiérrez explores the great Mexican artist’s life and work through her own words.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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My guess is that Frida Kahlo would have loathed “Immersive Frida Kahlo,” the kind of touring exhibit that professes to honor the canvas while bathing it in digital-tech kitsch. And, having seen Carla Gutiérrez’s riveting documentary Frida , I’m certain the artist would have announced her disdain with a laugh and a healthy dose of juicy invective. If you want to immerse yourself in Frida Kahlo, here is the real thing.

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Whatever that 2002 movie’s strengths and weaknesses, Gutiérrez’s nonfiction portrait (which takes its streaming bow March 15 on Prime Video) is, for starters, uncluttered by the layers of performance that define biographical drama. Frida ’s voice cast never diverts attention from the heart and soul of the story, and the exquisite work by Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero, as Kahlo, brings the great artist’s joys, sorrows, fierce intelligence and mouthy humor to life with an intense person-to-person intimacy.

The doc takes rewarding chances in its treatment of Kahlo’s artwork, chances that heighten the emotional connection between the painter and the image without overstepping. With sensitivity and elegance, animation by Sofía Inés Cázares and Renata Galindo adds movement to elements of the paintings and zeroes in on details: A Chihuahua’s tail wags, a plant’s leaves unfurl and sway, the earth cracks. If at certain moments the animation feels unnecessary given the sheer power of the imagery, it’s always in sync with the mood Kahlo is expressing, whether that mood is playful, celebratory or despairing.

As to the biography itself, it begins with photos of a plump toddler with a discerning gaze — hardly a surprise that she would soon be a smartass kid tossed out of class for pestering the priest with questions, or that, as a teen burning with intellectual and sexual hunger, she would hang out with the rebellious boys. Art was not Kahlo’s Plan A; she wanted to be a doctor, but a horrendous 1925 bus accident, when she was 18, would instead turn her into a lifelong patient. “The handrail,” Kahlo recalled, “went through me like a sword through a bull.” The free spirit was trapped, “alone with my soul,” and she began painting.

Emiliano Zapata was a crucial public figure in her childhood, and the film makes clear that through everything she endured — constant physical pain, many surgeries, braces and casts, the endless infidelities of her celebrated husband, Diego Rivera — she never let go of that revolutionary outlook. Art and revolution were resolutely entwined in the frescoes of her beloved Rivera and Mexico’s other great muralists of the early 20th century, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. One of the many delights of Frida is hearing her exuberant cursing (via Echevarría del Rivero) about the titans of industry who commissioned works from Rivera, along with the other “rich bitches,” “jerks” and “gringos” who made her seethe.

Kahlo had her own extramarital adventures, to be sure, among her lovers the on-the-lam Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and numerous famous artists, both men and women. And yet her struggles to accept Rivera’s affairs, as expressed in her writings, are wrenching; they cut through the simplistic “strong woman” stereotype to reveal the anguish and vulnerability that are often strength’s essence.

Perhaps the most searing example of her piercing insight involves her interactions with the French poet André Breton. Upon a visit to Mexico, he found her paintings in sync with the work of the Surrealists, the school of art he led. She knew nothing about them, and though Breton promoted her work in Paris, he also ignited her fury with his condescending use of cheap Mexican tchotchkes in the exhibit, meant as a thematic complement to her visionary canvases. Eventually, disgusted by the armchair revolutionaries she encountered in the salons of Europe, Kahlo concluded that she hated Surrealism. “A decadent manifestation of bourgeois art,” she called it.

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Gene Wilder and Frida Kahlo in Their Own Words (for Better and Worse)

These documentaries draw us in by giving the sense that we’re getting the story straight from the artists. But we’re not always getting the full picture.

By Alissa Wilkinson

Famous artists are a favorite subject for documentaries right now — probably because people love to watch them. And there are a lot of different ways to tell the story of someone’s life; the more famous they were, the more tools at the filmmaker’s fingertips.

Take, for instance, the new documentary “ Remembering Gene Wilder ,” a uniformly affectionate look at the life and work of the comic actor who died in 2016. (The film opens in theaters in New York on Friday, followed by a national expansion.) Though he did perform onstage, Wilder’s most memorable work was in films like “The Producers,” “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Blazing Saddles.”

Clips from those films and many others are combined with reflections from many of Wilder’s friends and colleagues, including his frequent collaborator Mel Brooks, Alan Alda, Carol Kane, Richard Pryor’s daughter Rain Pryor and Wilder’s widow, Karen Boyer. Pictures from Wilder’s youth and home video round out a portrait of a man whom everyone describes as gentle, innocent, kind, more or less saintly — and, of course, absolutely hilarious.

There’s a danger to this kind of movie, in that viewers get the sense that they’re getting the whole story even though selection bias is inevitably at work. (“Remembering Gene Wilder” mentions only two of Wilder’s four wives, for instance, and judging from the 2018 documentary “ Love, Gilda ” — about his third wife, the comedian Gilda Radner — there’s a great deal of story left untold.) But the filmmakers made the smart choice to weave narration from the audiobook of Wilder’s memoir into the narrative, drawing the audience closer by giving the sense that we’re hearing the story straight from him.

That’s also the technique at work in Carla Gutiérrez’s new documentary, “Frida” (on Prime Video), about the painter Frida Kahlo (1907-54). Her story has been told before, of course. But Kahlo kept copious, frank diaries about her life, her thoughts and her desires, and her artwork is highly personal. The actress Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero reads from Kahlo’s journals and letters (in Spanish and English, depending on the language in which they were written), with occasional input from others close to Kahlo.

The effect is immediate and personal, as if Kahlo is sitting right there with you, being funny and passionate and scathing and vulnerable. Gutiérrez uses archival footage of Kahlo, as well as paintings that are often animated, as if you’re seeing them come to life the way Kahlo might have in her mind’s eye. The result feels more raw and unfiltered than the one in “Remembering Gene Wilder,” more private and revelatory. But Kahlo always presented herself as a woman painting outside the lines, so it’s only appropriate that a movie about her would, too.

An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of the actress who reads Frida Kahlo’s words in “Frida.” She is Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero, not Fernanda Echevarría.

How we handle corrections

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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In ‘Frida’ documentary, artist Frida Kahlo’s own words are used to tell her story

This image released by Amazon Prime shows artist Frida Kahlo from the documentary “Frida.” (Amazon Prime via AP)

This image released by Amazon Prime shows promotional art for the documentary “Frida.” (Amazon Prime via AP)

FILE - Mexican Artists Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo appear in New York on May 11, 1933. A new documentary “Frida” tells the story of Kahlo from her diaries and letters. (AP Photo)

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Frida Kahlo used her own experiences to inform her art. In that spirit, Kahlo’s personal writings are used to help tell the story of her life in a new documentary, “Frida.”

Filmmaker Carla Gutiérrez blends first person narration with archival footage and interpretive animation of Kahlo’s work in the film, which is now streaming on Prime Video.

Gutiérrez, who was born in Peru and moved to the United States when she was a teenager, remembers first really connecting with Kahlo’s paintings in college.

“I was a new immigrant and there was one specific painting that really introduced me to her voice as an artist of her in between the border of the United States and Mexico,” Gutiérrez said in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this year. “I just saw my experience at the time really reflected in the painting. Then she just kind of became part of my life.”

Gutiérrez was an editor by trade and content with that path in filmmaking. She was working on meaningful projects like “RBG” and “Julia,” which allowed her to be intimately involved creatively. But when a director friend whispered Kahlo’s name to her, she went back and re-read one of those books she’d read in college. Within hours she was making plans to direct.

“I feel like this story really just kind of told me that I needed to step up and direct this one,” she said. “I realized she could tell a lot of her own story and I felt like that hadn’t been made yet. Hopefully it’s a new way of getting into her world and in her mind and her heart and really understanding the art in a more intimate, raw way.”

Kahlo did not do many interviews herself over the years, Gutiérrez said, but she did write very intimate and personal letters. She was surprised by her sense of humor, her sarcasm and her irony as well as and “how explicit she was about her opinions.”

“It’s kind of like messy confidence and messy feminism in a way,” she said.

The filmmaking team had to search several different museums to find those letters that they would compile into a full picture, including the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. (where her correspondence with her mother was housed) and the Philatelic Museum of Oaxaca, where they found her letters to her doctor about everything from her complex marriage to her miscarriage.

One of the biggest creative decisions was to animate Kahlo’s art throughout, which has proved a bit divisive since the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Some love it. Some don’t. But it was part of the vision for the film from the earliest stages. The hope, Gutiérrez said, was to transport audiences from the real world into her internal world.

“I always thought about her heart and her veins just kind of moving from her hands into the canvas,” she said. “We wanted to be very respectful to the paintings but bring in lyrical animation to feel like we were immersing into her actual feelings and heart.”

She is also especially proud that her collaborators are mostly Latinx and bilingual. The composer is Mexican. The animation team is all women from Mexico.

“To inject this cultural understanding of the country into the film is fantastic,” she said.

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This immersive series delves into Frida Kahlo's world, revealing an artist driven by politics, power, sex & identity, while at the heart of it beats her epic love affair with Diego Rivera. This immersive series delves into Frida Kahlo's world, revealing an artist driven by politics, power, sex & identity, while at the heart of it beats her epic love affair with Diego Rivera. This immersive series delves into Frida Kahlo's world, revealing an artist driven by politics, power, sex & identity, while at the heart of it beats her epic love affair with Diego Rivera.

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It’s the weekend and I’m dreaming about sushi from Waka Sakura in Gardena. I’m Carolina A. Miranda , art and design columnist at the Los Angeles Times, with all the raw fish and essential arts news:

A new take on Frida

Is it possible to know any more about Frida Kahlo than we already do? The 20th century Mexican painter placed her tumultuous life and her bodily pains on her canvases. Her husband, muralist Diego Rivera , incorporated her visage into some of his most famous murals . She was photographed relentlessly, even appearing in Vogue . And that was just in her lifetime. (Kahlo died in 1954 at the age of 47.)

Since then, she has been depicted in feature films by Mexican actors Ofelia Medina and Salma Hayek (in 1983 and 2002 , respectively), as well as in documentaries — most recently in director Louise Lockwood’s three-part series “Becoming Frida Kahlo.” She is also the subject of countless murals and other art. In Mexico City in 2016, I saw a fascinating installation by artist Juan Acha at the Museo de Arte Moderno that examined the ways in which Kahlo’s 1939 canvas “Las Dos Fridas” has been copied by fellow artists and appropriated by popular culture.

Kahlo’s work and her image also have generated endless mountains of merch (also addressed in Acha’s installation). Currently sitting on my desk is a stack of Frida Kahlo-branded cosmetics I acquired at Walgreens several years ago — objects in search of an essay.

All of this means that Peruvian-born director Carla Gutiérrez’s new documentary, “Frida , ” which landed this week on Prime Video , is entering a crowded field. Clocking in at almost 90 minutes, the doc provides a cursory overview of this well-chronicled artist. Certainly, the story of Kahlo could fill a set of encyclopedias: She came of age in the wake of the Mexican Revolution , was inspired by its mission to rethink the essence of Mexican culture, counted Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky among her lovers and produced groundbreaking paintings, inspired by folk traditions, that depict the devastations of womanhood. ( Hayden Herrera’s famous biography is more than 500 pages long.)

Like many Kahlo projects, Gutiérrez’s storyline rests on the broad narrative arc of Kahlo’s life. (If you’ve read Herrera’s biography, you’re probably not going to learn much.) But the film manages to stand out on a few fronts. For one, there are no awkward reenactments and no talking heads. Visuals consist exclusively of a mix of vintage footage and photography, along with Kahlo’s diaristic drawings and paintings — some of which are animated for added effect. Animating a painting can be cloying. (Can we let painting be painting?) But the filmmaker approaches her work with reverence. And the structure of the narrative, which centers Kahlo’s voice, drawn from her letters and diaries, makes the enterprise worthwhile.

Often translations of Kahlo’s writings soften her language. But “Frida” lets Kahlo be Kahlo. She calls Rivera “la gran caca ” (the big s—) and describes wanting to be “f—” by a school crush. She trash-talks the French Surrealists and expresses profound disgust with the Depression-era United States. “I am completely disappointed with the famous United States,” she declares. “Everything here is about appearances, but deep down it’s truly s—. I’ve seen thousands of people in the most terrible conditions, without anything to eat or anywhere to sleep.”

The narration, wonderfully performed by Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero , captures the musicality of Mexican Spanish — as well as Kahlo’s irreverent personality. It’s a nice break from the often-depicted long-suffering martyr.

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If you’re dipping a toe into the world of Kahlo, “Frida” is a good introductory work. But if you want something deeper, I recommend turning to Lockwood’s docuseries “Becoming Frida Kahlo,” which aired on PBS last fall.

The documentary tracks down key players: biographer Herrera, along with historians Martha Zamora and Luis-Martín Lozano , Kahlo’s great-niece Cristina Kahlo and Rivera’s grandson Juan Coronel Rivera . In addition to Kahlo’s life, the series explores the artist’s influences, which include the politics of the era, as well as important female artists such as photographer Tina Modotti . (If you want to keep going down the rabbit hole, British film theorists Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen made an interesting, impressionistic short film in 1983 that compared the work of Kahlo and Modotti — including their interest in the matriarchal societies of Tehuantepec .)

But altogether, these documentaries show that there is always room for more — namely, a deeper exploration of Kahlo’s art, its roots and its resonances. Kahlo makes for an absorbing narrative, but just as fascinating is the social and political context that produced her — including complex racial politics that mythologized Indigeneity while also subsuming it to a broader mestizo culture . Kahlo’s story has been told and retold, but there are still pieces left to divulge.

“Frida” is now screening on Prime Video .

Musical chairs

There are so many big personnel moves in the world of fine arts this week, it’s hard to keep up with them all!

Here in SoCal, L.A. Opera announced that music director James Conlon will step down after the 2025-26 season. “I have a lot of energy left, a lot of passion left,” Conlon tells The Times’ Jessica Gelt . “And there are other things that I feel I have wanted to do and I just can’t.” His departure will coincide with that of the L . A . Phil’s Gustavo Dudamel — marking a sea change for classical music in the city.

In the Bay Area, the big news is that Esa-Pekka Salonen is stepping down as music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 2025. In a statement to KQED , Salonen said he was leaving because “I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors.”

Joshua Kosman , classical music critic at the San Francisco Chronicle , theorizes that the COVID-19 pandemic put a dent in Salonen’s plans for the orchestra — turning what should have been a time of reinvention into one of survival — and he nods to the conductor’s tensions with the board. “Yet in spite of everything,” he writes , “the Salonen years have been a glorious time for Symphony audiences, full of musical adventure, discovery and luxurious execution.”

Meanwhile on the Right Coast...

Roberta Smith , the venerable co-chief art critic at the New York Times , has announced her retirement after 32 years at the paper. Over her tenure, she authored some 4,500 reviews and essays and was the first woman to hold the title of chief art critic. “In my coals-to-Newcastle-life,” Smith stated in an Instagram post , “I will have more time to pursue my number one interest, which is going to galleries and museums, looking at stuff.” Hyperallergic’s Valentina Di Liscia spotlights some of her career highlights .

Tina Rivers Ryan , a curator who specialized in digital art at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum , was named the top editor at Artforum . This follows a period of turmoil after editor in chief David Velasco was fired for publishing an open letter in support of the Palestinian cause.

Performing arts

Times theater critic Charles McNulty writes that there are few plays more appropriate for our pandemic age than Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.” Written in 1882, the story about a doctor-turned-whistleblower has been surfacing a lot as of late. It was recently reimagined by Theater of War Productions and Amy Herzog has written her own adaptation, which will soon premiere on Broadway. “The central conflict of ‘An Enemy of the People’ resonates in manifold ways today,” writes McNulty, “from the water crisis in Flint, Mich., to the political demonization of public health experts during the COVID-19 pandemic to the MAGA Republican effort to undermine truth itself.”

“The Last Repair Shop” is a remarkable, inspiring doc about the craftspeople who maintain the musical instruments for LAUSD — and on Sunday it won the Academy Award for documentary short . This marks the first-ever Oscar win for The Times, which produced the film. (!!!) Jazz critic Nate Chinen , who writes “The Gig,” has a great piece on the doc — and what it represents for co-director Kris Bowers , a jazz pianist and composer.

Do not miss this gorgeous little film. Watch “The Last Repair Shop” here .

In and out of the galleries

In 2020, Elizabeth Alexander launched the Monuments Project at the Mellon Foundation to help preserve and recontextualize monuments — as well as remove them when communities no longer deem them appropriate. This has resulted not just in a shift in the histories honored, but in what is considered a monument to begin with . “There are so many ways we mark spaces to tell stories,” says Alexander. A monument could be a boulder. It could also be a book.

Speaking of monuments, this story about clashes over an anti-abortion monument in Arkansas is all kinds of bananas .

Jori Finkel has an interesting article in the Art Newspaper about a new show of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work at Gagosian that focuses on the years that the artist spent in L.A.

Have you seen mysterious images of pink sheep around Los Angeles? Over on De Los , reporter Steven Vargas profiles artist Ricky Sencion — a.k.a. Little Ricky — who was inspired to paste them around the city after reading a quote by designer Alexander McQueen .

Design time

My colleague Lisa Boone looks into the latest in ADU design : a tight, 300-square-foot unit , tucked above a garage, by architects Jefferson Schierbeek and Su Addison , that make the most of smart storage areas, high ceilings and strategically placed windows.

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A building by architect Samuel Tilden Norton , designer of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple , is under threat of demolition. This week, the L.A. City Council voted to allow the destruction of the B’nai B’rith Lodge , completed in 1924, a Jewish landmark that later became an important organizing center for various labor unions. Preservationists and community advocates are urging Catholic Charities , which now owns the building, to repair and reuse it. The Times’ Angie Orellana Hernandez has the details .

Student art on the Vegas Sphere ? The entity that manages the Sphere has announced a design competition for students of the Clark County School District and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas .

In more Esa-Pekka Salonen news, the San Francisco Symphony music director has won the Polar Music Prize .

Barry Hughson , of the National Ballet of Canada, is the new executive director of American Ballet Theater in New York.

Elizabeth C. Babcock has been named the inaugural director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in Washington, D.C. She is currently the CEO and president of Forever Balboa Park in San Diego.

Dalila Scruggs has joined the Smithsonian American Art Museum as the museum’s first curator of African American art .

Edward Bond , a British playwright known for unsparing work depicting rage and violence, whose 1965 play “Saved” led to the end of British theatrical censorship, has died at 89 .

Lynn Fainchtein , who served as music supervisor on important Mexican films such as Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Amores Perros” and Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” is dead at 61 .

In the news

— I’m very into photographer Fujio Kito’s Tumblr of Japanese playgrounds at night. — I’m also into this episode of the “Critics at Large” podcast about fictions set in the workplace. I’d add Netflix’s darkly hilarious “Carol & the End of the World” to their list, which is all about using office mundanity to while away time until an inevitable apocalypse . — Edward Zitron has an interesting essay on AI and the “Habsburg” internet, where originality goes to die . — A new study of Indigenous cave art in Puerto Rico shows that it is much older than previously thought . — Pablo Helguera has a rather comical dispatch on a conservation effort gone slightly wrong at Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral . — A work by L.A. artist Charles Gaines featuring Palestinian scholar Edward Said was deinstalled then reinstalled at the ICA Miami , but it is unclear why . — Workers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have delivered a letter to museum leaders to address the destruction of cultural heritage sites in Gaza . — Dancer and choreographer Carlos Acosta is reimagining “The Nutcracker” with a Cuban theme . — Every IKEA catalog since 1950 .

And last but not least ...

The best Kate Middleton Photoshop memes .

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Carolina A. Miranda is a former Los Angeles Times columnist who focused on art and design, with regular forays into other areas of culture, including performance, books and digital life.

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Films, documentaries, biopics

Frida (2024).

Directed by Carla Gutiérrez

Produced By Katia Maguire, Sara Bernstein, Justin Wilkes, Loren Hammonds, Alexandra Johnes

An intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo, FRIDA is told through her own words for the very first time, drawn from her famed illustrated diary, revealing letters, essays, and candid print interviews — and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork. The feature film directorial debut of acclaimed editor Carla Gutiérrez (RBG, La Corona), FRIDA posits a striking context as to why the artist – and her art -- remains as powerful as ever.

Covering more than 40 years of her life, the filmmakers received unrestricted access to research materials, much never shown to the general public before. What is extraordinary about Kahlo's life and art is how her images would galvanize multiple generations of admirers worldwide, doing more than solidifying her status as a modern artist of timeless import.

An intensive journey spanning two years, Gutiérrez and her formidable team of artisans, most of whom are women and proudly Latine, gathered together to craft a singular cinematic experience that could be no ordinary art history lesson. A living portrait emboldened by the magical realism befitting Kahlo's remarkable life emerges. Yet, her voice ultimately stands supreme, a complex and powerful sound of a multitude of Fridas: fearless, seductive, defiant, vulnerable, raucous, and wonderfully alive.

Presented at the Sundance Film Festival 2024

Interesting reviews:

New Frida Kahlo Documentary at Sundance Doesn’t Even Scratch the Surface of a Complex Artist  (ARTnews)

Why Director Carla Gutierrez Wanted Frida Kahlo to Tell Her Own Story in the Sundance Doc ‘Frida  (Variety)

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Exhibition On Screen - Frida Kahlo (2020)

Directed by Ali Ray Writers: Phil Grabsky and Ali Ray

Exhibition on Screen™ is the originator and pioneer of bringing exhibition-based art films to the cinema. The documentary dedicated to Frida Kahlo was in cinemas starting from 20 October 2020 and will be shown at the Sedona International Film Festival on October 27, 2020.

Using letters Kahlo wrote to guide us, this definitive film reveals her deepest emotions and unlocks the secrets and symbolism contained within her art. Exhibition on Screen’s trademark combination of interviews, commentary and a detailed exploration of her art delivers a treasure trove of color and a feast of vibrancy. Filmed extensively at The Blue House in Mexico City, this personal and intimate film offers privileged access to her works, and highlights the source of her feverish creativity, her resilience, and her unmatched lust for life, politics, men and women.

“Directing this film has totally changed my view on Frida Kahlo as an artist,” said director Ali Ray. “Now, having studied her works closely and understanding their context of time and place, I am utterly gripped. Having access to her personal letters was a key part of making the film, and in my own understanding of her work. It enabled me to see how the fragility and insecurities revealed in her letters were processed through the act of painting. Her meticulously painted canvases were how she interpreted the world, her politics, passions and emotions, transforming them into images of strength, defiance and understanding.” (taken from VerdeNews.com )

From an interesting review by The Reviews Hub : Exhibition On Screen fulfils its brief in giving not just an overview of Frida Kahlo, but offering fresh artistic insight. Highlighting Kahlo’s technical and conceptual prowess, Exhibition On Screen ensures that we are left in no doubt of Frida’s place in art history. Kahlo not only makes herself artist and muse, her visual vocabulary – pain, suffering and love – goes to the heart of the human condition. We are shown Kahlo in her truest form and her own image: emotionally complex and fiercely radical.

At this link an interview with Ali Ray in italian.

Go to the Exhibition on Screen website to buy this film (download/stream/dvd).

Frida - Viva la Vida (2019)

The docu-film directed by Giovanni Troilo proposes a journey in six chapters in search of Frida, in the heart of Mexico, among cactus, monkeys, deers and parrots, alternating exclusive interviews, period documents, evocative reconstructions and works by Kahlo herself, including the most famous self-portraits (from the one with Diego Rivera of 1931 to the Two Fridas of 1939, from The broken column of 1944 to the Wounded Deer of 1946). The final images, in which the two Frida appear, are archive and unknown ones. The discovery was exciting: "It took us months to find their origin. They were shot by Lola Alvarez Bravo, the only gallery owner, woman among other things, who organized a retrospective during Frida's life in 1953, the year before her death. They are part of an unfinished documentary, precisely because of the painter's dramatic health conditions ». the director says in an interview with the newspaper La stampa.

The film Frida - Viva la Vida, directed by Gianni Troilo, was distributed by Nexo Digital  in Italy from 25 to 27 November 2019.

Not all reviews were positive:

"The interviews with experts on Frida's private and artistic life follow a fil rouge made up of Frida's own words: letters, diaries and private confessions.

In the middle there are avoidable authorial segments, such as the model representing the soul of the two Frida who runs and walks and pines as in a Malik film and the highly questionable choice of Asia Argento as a narrative voice, which hits a lot the ear of the spectator.

Frida Kahlo's life and works should be left to speak for themselves, without metaphorical or rhetorical twirls. " by  Non solo cinema  

For an interesting interview (in Italian) with the director and other insights click  here .

Click here for the  trailer .

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Dos Fridas (2018)

"Dos Fridas” , directed by Ishtar Yasin, was inspired by the relationship between Frida and the Costa Rican nurse Judith Ferreto, who took care of Frida during the final years of her life. In her memories, Frida was cared for by Judith in her Blue house in México. As a mirror, Judith was cared for by a woman in Costa Rica. In Judith's inner world, reveries, myths, imagination and reality intertwine. Frida is played by the director Ishtar Yasin herself.

"Dos Fridas" showed in the Competition of the 22nd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 2018 and at Sundance in 2019.

Review by Julia Morales: “ This film is a love poem to Frida Kahlo and the Mexican culture. It reflects upon resilience through pain, freedom of artistic expression, as well as freedom of sexuality. The actors in the film create a wonderfully surreal story that exposes a new light into Frida Kahlo’s tough life. This film is truly a gift to the Mexican art community, and the Latino art community as a whole. It unapologetically speaks truth of things that are oftentimes overlooked within Frida’s life, and creates a reflective story through her trauma. I truly enjoyed Dos Fridas as a Latina filmmaker myself, and I would highly recommend viewing this film when you’re in an existential mood . “

Click here for a totally different review by DMovies.

At this link one  trailer on You Tube.

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Chez Frida Kahlo (2011)

A film by Xavier D'Arthus and Xavier Villetard directed by Xavier Villetard

This documentary details the relationship of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, highlighting the role that the couple and Casa Azul took in the days of Communists fleeing to Mexico. It shows how Leon Trotsky's exile to Mexico City and Casa Azul affected the couple and their circle. Rare footage of Frida, Diego, Trotsky, and stock footage of Casa Azul and the couple's shared home are the core of the movie.

Visit the Publisher website  to watch a teaser. Full movie is also available in French and English.

The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo (2005)

"The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo" chronicles the life and art of the great Mexican painter as never before, framing Kahlo's life in relationship to the historical and cultural influences that inspired her and defined the first half of the 20th century. The 90-minute high-definition film is a production of Daylight Films and WETA Washington, D.C., in association with Latino Public Broadcasting. It premieres March 23, 2005, at 9 p.m., on PBS stations nationwide. (Check local listings.)

Visit the website dedicated to this TV documentary

youtube link to full documentary

"Frida" (2002)

"Frida", directed by Julie Taymor, stars Salma Hayek (Frida), Alfred Molina (Diego Rivera), Antonio Banderas (David Alfaro Siqueiros), Ashley Judd (Tina Modotti) and many others.

Internet Movie Database articol from El Andar tells us the story of the "Hollywood's long, slow race to make the definitive Frida Kahlo film "

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Great Women Artists: Frida Kahlo (2001)

This documentary is part of a series that profiles outstanding women artists. This volume focuses on the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. As a young girl, Kahlo suffered terrible injuries in a traffic accident. Her lifelong struggle with pain shaped and informed her art. Her bold style and emotionally charged works capture the passion she displayed in all aspects of her life. Married to the muralist Diego Rivera, she was great friends with Leon Trotsky, whose philosophy she embraced. This documentary presents some of Kahlo's best-known paintings.

"Frida Kahlo's Corset" (2000)

Frida Kahlo's Corset is a short experimental drama that follows a journey of transformation by Frida who wore a series of orthopaedic corsets because of impairment. The film draws on Kahlo's own words and characteristically bold painting style. It refutes the picture of Kahlo's life as one of tragedy and suffering. As Liz Crow said in an interesting  interview "She struggled, true, but as an absolute survivor, not a victim. So in the film the corset is both literal and symbolic. It's literally an assault on her sense of her self, but the corset and the way it's applied are also symbols of colonisation - one of the major themes of her work - in this case the medical colonisation of the body. The film shows a journey of transformation as she establishes a new sense of self."

(UK/Sp 2000) 16mm: 10 min. Director: Liz Crow, Production Company: Infinite Blue Productions Picture This Moving Image, Production Design: Melanie Leeson, editor: Andy Moss, music/composer: Caravanserai, Hetty Hope, writer: Liz Crow, Ralph Hoyte, Cast: Isolte Avila, Laura Jerram, Carmen Brauning.

R ead here the complete interview with Liz Crow 

"A Ribbon Around a Bomb" (1992)

It is hardly enough time to do justice to the passionate life and art of Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter who seems about to jump off the canvases of her vibrant, fantastic self-portraits. Even more than her accessible art, Kahlo's explosive existence has made her something of a pop icon in recent years. That well-documented life is the subject of "Frida Kahlo: A Ribbon Around a Bomb," a part-documentary, part-performance film published on 1992. The director Ken Mandel takes a scattershot approach to this material. He weaves together interviews with people who knew Kahlo, several photographs and films of her, and many shots of her most familiar paintings. Most successfully, he includes excerpts of a theater piece by Abraham Oceransky called "The Diary of Frida Kahlo," presented by Teatro Dallas. The documentary sections are extremely weak, because Kahlo's associates are not sufficiently identified, their often spurious opinions not put in any context. Surely the bloodiness of Kahlo's paintings cannot be traced simply to her one-time ambition to study medicine, as an interview subject claims. But the dramatized episodes, based on Kahlo's diaries, are surprisingly effective. Most of this theater piece is a monologue performed by Cora Cardona, sometimes joined by Quigley Provost as a younger Kahlo. Ms. Cardona does not imitate Kahlo so much as bring the depths of that volcanic, tortured personality to life. Depicting Kahlo's reaction to her accident, she wraps a large chain around her leg and reveals both pain and astonishing strength as she says: "I am not dead. I am not sick. I am only broken." Still, the film, whose subtitle comes from Andre Breton's description of Kahlo's art, is likely to be too shallow for anyone who knows her story and too sketchy for anyone unfamiliar with it. Ms. Cardona's trenchant performance hints at how illuminating this film might have been.

Directed and edited by Ken Mandel; based on the play by Abraham Oceransky; director of photography, Jeff Hurst; music by John Bryant and Frank Hames; produced by Mr. Hurst, Mr. Mandel and Cora Cardona; a Roxie release. Performed by: Cora Cardona, Quigley Provost and Costa Caglage.

"Diego Rivera: I paint what I see" (1989)

The first biographical film on the famed Mexican artist, "DIEGO RIVERA: I PAINT WHAT I SEE", directed by Mary Lance, traces his life from childhood through his Cubist period, his leading role in the Mexican mural renaissance, his fame as a muralist in the USA, and his later years. The film explores Rivera's life and work, including his stormy relationship with Frida Kahlo and the destruction of his famous mural at Rockefeller Center. Shot on location in Mexico and the United States, the film includes a remarkable collection of archival film and photographs, much of which has not been seen before. The text is drawn from the writings of Rivera and Kahlo and from other historical texts. Using Rivera's own words, this richly detailed film brings to life the difficulty he faced in his transition from studio artist to public and political artist, and the conflicts that arose from that point onward.

"Frida, Naturaleza Viva" (1983)

directed by Paul Leduc, starring Ofelia Medina as Frida Kahlo

click here to see the complete movie in YouTube

Review by Jayne Margetts

"For director Paul Leduc it would have been a difficult task to try to capture facets of Frida's vivid and flamboyant personality and life in any feature-length format, let alone recreating some of the defining moments that shaped the artist she was. But with his grainy and abstract, re-enacted documentary Frida, Naturaleza Viva he has done Kahlo proud in not succumbing to heavy analysis. Rather, he chooses to piece together snapshots of her life with the grace of humility of directing a rustic opera performed to a minimal backdrop.

Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Through his eyes we experience Kahlo's stormy relationship with muralist Diego Rivera, her comradeship and sentimentality with the exiled Leon Trotsky, her struggle for acceptance as an artist, her patriotism and love for Mexico her affairs with David Squiros and the horrors of her miscarriage and the amputation of her leg....

Actress Ofelia Medina who portrays Kahlo bears not only an uncanny resemblance, but shares her mannerisms, her dignity and her feverish passion, while Luduc's camera roves silently across the parchment of her sacred paintings capturing the ambience and atmosphere of those troubled and turbulent times in which she lived.

Portrait of an Artist: Frida Kahlo (1983)

Frida kahlo (art documentary) (2007).

A film by EILA HERSHON and ROBERTO GUERRA

Commentary by Hayden Herrera Narrated by Sada Thompson Edited by Caroline Emmonds Directed by Eila Hershon, Roberto Guerra and Wibke von Bonin

Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti (1982)

Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen, 30 mins Colour 16 mm film.

A documentary about the lives and work of painter Frida Kahlo and photographer Tina Modotti, divided into sections: History; Popular Life and Culture; Roots and Movements; Biography; Inward/Outward; The Body; Injury/Beauty. Also included is a home movie of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at their 'Blue House' in Coyoacan, and Tina Modotti in the 1919 Hollywood film,The Tigers Coat.

Both Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti were artists working in Mexico in the aftermath of the Revolution, during a period of general cultural awakening and social change. Frida was married to Diego Rivera and was born, worked and died in the same 'blue house' in Coyoacan, while Tina Modotti emigrated to California with her family from Udine, Italy, and travelled to Mexico with Edward Weston, where she then stayed to become a photographer in her own right. The broad similarities between their lives bind the film as a whole, reflecting on the representation of women, women's art and feminist aesthetics; while the differences between them make up the content.

More info at the Luxonline website

youtube video

"The Life and Death of Frida Kahlo as Told to Karen and David Crommie" (1966)

In 1965 Karen and David Crommie made this film featuring interviews with many people who knew and worked with Frida and are no longer with us. Frida was quite unknown when the film debuted in 1966 at the San Francisco International Film Festival and when Hayden Herrera saw it at a screening in New York later that year she was motivated to write her Frida's biography.

The first ever Frida documentary. And the rest is history.

“Directing this film has totally changed my view on Frida Kahlo as an artist,” said director Ali Ray. “Now, having studied her works closely and understanding their context of time and place, I am utterly gripped. Having access to her personal letters was a key part of making the film, and in my own understanding of her work. It enabled me to see how the fragility and insecurities revealed in her letters were processed through the act of painting. Her meticulously painted canvases were how she interpreted the world, her politics, passions and emotions, transforming them into images of strength, defiance and understanding.” (taken from  VerdeNews.com )

From an interesting review by  The Reviews Hub : Exhibition On Screen fulfils its brief in giving not just an overview of Frida Kahlo, but offering fresh artistic insight. Highlighting Kahlo’s technical and conceptual prowess, Exhibition On Screen ensures that we are left in no doubt of Frida’s place in art history. Kahlo not only makes herself artist and muse, her visual vocabulary – pain, suffering and love – goes to the heart of the human condition. We are shown Kahlo in her truest form and her own image: emotionally complex and fiercely radical.

At  this link  an interview with Ali Ray in italian.

Go to the  Exhibition on Screen website  to buy this film (download/stream/dvd).

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www.fridakahlo.it

Edited and written by Daniela Falini