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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. Let's play a little game. Can you name this artist just from the titles of three paintings? Here they are, self-portrait with cropped hair, the wounded deer, and the two Fridas. A lot of you listening might have guessed Frida Kahlo, and you'd be correct. Even though she was active in the 1930s through the '50s, and even though she passed away at the age of 47, her work has endured to make her a cultural icon today.

While a lot of us recognize her self-portraits, we might not be as familiar with her sharp wit or her describing her own life and work. A new documentary called Frida aims to fix that. Instead of listening to people who knew about Ms. Kahlo, we hear from Frida herself. At least, we hear her life told through her own words, her diaries, her letters. We also see her work in a new way through reimagined animations of her paintings. Frida is the directorial debut of filmmaker Carla Gutierrez, and she joins us now. Hi, Carla.

Carla Gutierrez: Hey, thank you for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Thanks for being here. There have been lots of documentaries about Frida Kahlo, but yours is attempting some firsts of its kind. Can you tell us what your documentary does that's new with the subject of Frida?

Carla Gutierrez: Yes. I had seen all the documentaries that existed of Frida that had been done before. When I went back to the books about her, I saw that she really told the story of many things that happened in her life, and that there was an opportunity for her herself to tell us about her feelings throughout life. We went into heavy research to gather all her writings.

To tell you the truth, we knew that we wanted Frida to carry her own story and we wanted to give her the mic, but we thought that we were going to rely on other people's voices. We always wanted to make the film very present tense. We only wanted to hear from voices that were witnesses of what had happened to her, that were people that loved her and people that took care of her, the people that were very present in her life. We thought that we were going to rely on those voices a little bit more, and then when we started reading all of her writings, Frida herself told us, "No, I want to take control of this storytelling." Of course, we just were guided by her. We allowed her to take over, and that was a beautiful experience.

Kousha Navidar: What was it like trying to get access to all of that material? I imagine it must have been heavy research.

Carla Gutierrez: Yes. I have to credit my producing team, led by the amazing producer, Katia Maguire. Also, the beautiful thing and something that I know that Frida Kahlo probably would've wanted is that Diego Rivera, after Frida died, her husband, Diego Rivera, gifted all of the copyright for both his art and her art, and also all of their writings to the people of Mexico. They were both communists. They believed that art really belonged to the people.

We had access. We asked permission to the government of Mexico to be able to use her writings in this film. Then my team went ahead and looked for every writing that there was of Frida. They're in different collections around the world, so they're not in one single place. There hasn't been a single publication that carries all of her writing. There was a lot of involved research to just get every word that she has said that we could get access to. We even have notes from her in high school telling her mom, "I'm going to be late from school. Can you send me some money for lunch?" We really gathered everything that we could and we started reading her voice. We started really hearing her voice as we were reading these writings. She really came alive for me in a way that I had never heard her before, and I'm somebody that was really obsessed with her.

Kousha Navidar: Was there something that you discovered that you didn't know about her before, like "Wow, she's very funny," or, "Wow, she's very cynical"? Something.

Carla Gutierrez: That was part of it. When I said I was obsessed, I was obsessed. I was like probably millions of people. They discover her art, they connect with it on an emotional level, and then they get really interested in learning about her life also because her art is so connected to her lived experience. What surprised me really was to be able to hear that texture of her personality and really get to the essence of her spirit in a way. Hearing her fragility, for example. She had a long letter when she pregnant and she didn't know if her body was strong enough to keep the pregnancy. She didn't even know if she wanted to keep the pregnancy or maybe abort it.

You could hear a woman that was contending with these big questions about her personal life in a very fragile and fearful way. To hear that fragility just gave me more entire picture of her as a human being in all her complexities and all her messiness. Her wit was something also that was surprising. The many ways that she expressed herself when she was criticizing a situation, or she was criticizing people. She definitely had a sharp tongue, and it was really fun to hear that straight from her own voice.

Kousha Navidar: The sharp tongue comes out. Also, the sharp visuals come out. One of the most striking elements visually is when you animate Frida Kahlo's paintings. Listeners, for instance, in the opening title sequence, you see her 1938 painting titled What the Water Gave Me. The elements of that painting, like the bathtub, the feet in the water, the volcano skyscraper, they all appear as you pan down and they're all swaying to music and appearing as the camera goes down along the painting. Carla, when did you decide that you wanted to include and animate the paintings?

Carla Gutierrez: From the very beginning, actually. As we were conceiving the approach for the film, we always wanted to find a way to, in a way, dive in and have the viewers dive into her pool of thoughts and pool of emotions. I even had this image of us swimming through those emotions. It was a way to really jump into her internal world. When you see a piece of art in a museum, and I've been able to see a few of her paintings in person, you can have this conversation with the painting. You can really take your time and have the emotional reactions, but also pay attention to all the details.

We were bringing her art into this cinematic universe, where the story was moving forward. I wanted, in a way, for the viewers to have that same experience, to have a conversation with the intention that Frida Kahlo had for those paintings. I wanted to guide the audience through the different emotions that I wanted to highlight in the paintings, and again, be very respectful and truthful to the intention that we believe Frida Kahlo had in those specific paintings. It was a bold choice, because how do you choose to touch the paintings of such an iconic artist? It's like, it is not even a comparison, but messing with the world of Star Wars. My kids will get really upset if you mess up with the rules. I think it's a bold choice that I'm really happy about because we were able to really highlight what she wanted us to say.

Kousha Navidar: How have viewers reacted to that bold choice?

Carla Gutierrez: We've got some people that criticized it because, how do you touch her art? I think, overall, the audiences are really loving the choice because they feel, again, that they are being able to take that jump and really immerse themselves in her thoughts and in her feelings.

Kousha Navidar: You're listening to All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. We're talking about the new documentary, Frida, which tells the story of artist Frida Kahlo through her own diaries and letters. We're talking to Carla Gutierrez, the film's director and editor. Carla, we know there's so much that a storyteller leaves on the cutting room floor. Was there a letter? Was there a painting where you thought, "Oof, I really wish we had space for that one"?

Carla Gutierrez: There's that feeling at the beginning, but once you let go of some things that you really loved or you discover during the research process, you feel more and more confident that you're leaving those things out for the service of the story. The theme that we always talked about with my team was, here's a woman who cannot contain her voice and chooses not to contain her voice, especially in a society and at a time where the voices of women were very much suppressed. She was just loud and very honest with the expression of her true self through her art. The choices that we make was always at the service of that theme, were always at the service as showing really being able to capture that spirit. There were some details that we left out, but I think the film and the storytelling is better for it.

Kousha Navidar: You had worked on other documentaries prior to this about other influential figures, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Julia Child. What have you learned about telling stories about cultural icons that you put to work here?

Carla Gutierrez: I realized that I'm very much attracted to badasses.

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Kousha Navidar: Absolutely.

Carla Gutierrez: I think that will continue. What I've learned and my approach when I get involved with a biopic is, again, not to just do a list, cover the list of greatest hits or all the accomplishments of that person, but how do you go beyond that? How do you really get a sense of their emotional journey? For example, with Julia Child, for me, that film was about pleasure and about an older woman finding a passion and giving into that pleasure, enjoying life like that. For RBG, it was about a woman that believed that progress happens very slowly, but you just have to do the work, and she did the work all the time.

It's really how do you capture the essence of somebody. With Frida, again, about a woman that chose not to contain her voice and that her artistic expression gave her a catharsis. It was a cathartic process for her that gave her so much with the fact that she lost so much in her life. Painting really completed her life. How good that is to let it out and to let it out in honest ways?

Kousha Navidar: Would you say that this catharsis that she felt that you're describing, the ability to bring that to viewers is what you're proudest of with this piece, or is it something different?

Carla Gutierrez: I think so. I think that I kept thinking about my own relationship with Frida's art. I discovered her when I was a young immigrant in the United States, and I saw a painting of hers where she was standing in between the United States and Mexico. I felt that that really reflected my own feelings and my own experience.

As I mature as a woman, that was the experience that I always had when I saw one of her paintings. That I saw myself in her, and it was because she got so personal. Even though it was her face, she was just really saying in her paintings my most intimate feelings, even if it's about grief, even if it's about pain. Those are important, and they're important enough for me to pour those feelings onto the canvases. If we capture that in the film, and that's what people take away from our film, then I hope we did our work.

Kousha Navidar: Do you think that's particularly important right now? Why tell the story about Frida right now?

Carla Gutierrez: There's a reason why we keep connecting with her. Besides the fact that she's become a symbol for feminist empowerment or queer freedom, or people with disabilities, I think just her showing that honesty and the release of your honest feelings is cathartic. It's like therapy. For her, it was through her paintings. Especially now, because we curate so much the way that we show ourselves to the world with social media, I think it's still very difficult for us to really face the tough parts of ourselves or the pain that is inside of ourselves, and we hide it. Especially, I feel, women. We hide those things. We don't think that they're important. That was really the goal for this film, to show that.

Kousha Navidar: You just made me think of something quickly, before we have to wrap up here. Social media. What do you think Frida Kahlo would've made of social media today, after reading all of her letters?

Carla Gutierrez: I would say she was one of the first people that did a lot of selfies but did a lot of raw, very open, honest selfies with her paintings. She really showed her internal being so much. I actually think that she would've had a lot of fun with it. I actually think that she would react to what she's become because she's not only become a symbol, but she's a commercial image at this point. She's a pop culture image. I personally think that she would've had a lot of fun with it and would've really respected how irrelevant all of that is. She would've had a lot of opinions about it and would've laughed really hard and would've told everybody how they got it wrong. That's what I think.

Kousha Navidar: Carla Gutierrez has been with us. She's the director of Frida...A Self Portrait, talks about Frida Kahlo through her own words, her letters, and her diaries. Carla, thank you so much.

Carla Gutierrez: Thank you so much.

Kousha Navidar: Coming up on tomorrow's show, in almost exactly a month, it'll be tax time, Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, also known as The Money Coach, joins us to discuss how to prepare and get your finances in order. Thank you all so much for joining us today. This has been All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, we'll see you tomorrow.

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