In Production

When women challenge the bulls(---)

By Michael Fox

The great Western director Budd Boetticher returned to Mexico in 1951 to make a semi-autobiographical movie, "Bullfighter and the Lady." If the crusty, charming coot were still with us, I suspect he’d try and badger Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco into naming their upcoming documentary "Bullfighter Is the Lady." Not that he’d get anywhere with the spirited Spaniards, who wisely chose a less awkward and more assertive title: She Wants to be a Matador.

The doc, which blends history with up-to-the-minute profiles of acclaimed Spanish bullfighter Mari Paz Vega and Italian neophyte Eva Florencia, is not the gritty feminist empowerment story some might expect, but, according to Carrasco, it’s "more about pursuing a dream and being passionate about something [when] you have all the obstacles to get there." You might say it’s a universal saga.

"It began as a gender story," Cubero acknowledges, "and we wanted to explore the changes in bullfighting when you change the gender of the protagonist. We’re used to seeing mothers or lovers of matadors, who suffer and live in the shadows of matadors. [Mari Paz and Eva] enter the arena and they are the protagonists. That role has changed and that’s what compelled us to do the story. But why would they want to do it? It’s all about who they are. When you have passion, the gender doesn’t matter. If you’re good, when you’re in front of the animal, it’s beyond gender. It’s about dreams."

In one of those fortuitous meetings that may enter the annals of Bay Area film history, the dynamic duo were introduced in local doc maker Lourdes Portillo’s office during the production of Señorita Extraviada. Carrasco had come to San Francisco in 1997 after finishing film studies in her native Barcelona, and ended up working in the Exploratorium’s film and video department. She was just 21 when she joined Portillo as an assistant.

Cubero, who was born in Segovia and grew up in the Valladolid region, began a journalism career after graduating from college in North Carolina. She met Portillo in 1999, and signed on as a researcher. "Señorita Extraviada was the first film I worked on and I realized that was the right fit for me," she recalls. "No film can prepare you for the next, but it gave us a really good experience and motivation to say, ‘We want to do our own film.’" And the topic? "The fact that we were here gave us the perspective on our own culture," Cubero explains. "We’ve always heard about bullfighting, but we weren’t very knowledgeable about it."

Carrasco and Cubero operated as a two-person crew for the entire production of She Wants to Be a Matador, with all the difficulties you might imagine. But something vitally important was gained. "We could move faster," Carrasco relates, "we could get into the fights and the ring without calling attention, we got really close to our characters, shooting in their hotel rooms, in their bathrooms. What would have changed if we had men in our crew? Access and intimacy."

They shot She Wants to Be a Matador in Spain and Mexico, with a side trip or two to Portugal, but the funding to date has been raised entirely in the U.S. (including a grant from Latino Public Broadcasting and a Tribeca All Access Award). Their company, Talcual Films, is now bi-continental, with Carrasco based in Madrid and Cubero in San Francisco. They just finished cutting the one-hour doc here, and were in their Berkeley office this past Sunday prepping for a meeting the next day with the sound designer when they took time out to conduct an interview via speakerphone.

Cubero and Carrasco say they’re aiming to complete postproduction "by the second week in January." That’s a singularly refreshing statement; the second week in January happens to coincide with the opening of Sundance, and 99.9 percent of filmmakers with works-in-progress will say the festival is driving their schedule. But not these two, and they mean it.

"We want to be done no matter what," Carrasco declares. "We are not finishing the film because of a particular festival. Yes, we applied to Sundance, and we also sent it to Berlin and Rotterdam. But it’s been nine years working on the film. San Francisco or Tribeca would be great places to premiere."

In Bullfighter and the Lady, Budd Boetticher undercut Hollywood cliches and shallow romanticism with a solid dose of reality. He would have appreciated the fidelity and integrity of She Wants to Be a Matador, and its directors.

"We don’t want to empower young girls to bullfight," Carrasco says. "[The film] doesn’t have a happy ending. It’s a pretty tough profession."

To watch the trailer, and for more information about the film, visit www.talcualfilms.com.

topics: bay area, documentary, features, festivals, independent film, world cinema

11.11.2008