This is my part. Nobody else speak.

The Personal Documentary: Discovering Truth in Reflection

(This is a rather long post, but I hope you stay with me.)

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The film opens with Beba lying down and the wide span of ocean peeking behind her. Half of her face, which is angled up toward the sky, takes most of the space on screen. Immediately we know this film will be about her.

We hear a montage of voices of people talking to Beba or reflecting about Beba. Describing her. Lecturing to her. The words “This is my part. Nobody else speak” appear on a Black screen.

We’re only a minute in, but there is power in how director Rebecca Huntt commands space without yet speaking. (This phrase is also a cultural nod/reference to Chance the Rapper’s verse in Kanye’s Ultralight Beam.)

And when she speaks, she extends an invitation that doubles as a warning:

“You are now entering my universe. I am the lens, the subject, and the authority.”

And now, the journey begins. 

BEBA (2021) is an experimental feature documentary that explores Afro-Latina filmmaker Rebecca “Beba” Huntt’s identity and generational trauma growing up in New York City. 

Beba’s life is reflected through layers of intimate vignettes, family archival footage, unflinching dramatic reenactments and interviews. We see glimpses of the moments that shaped her identity and gave her the language to express her reality. The ways cycles of harm, abuse, and violence coexist with love, care and tradition in her family is central to the plot, but also to her development and healing.

Traditional documentaries are meant to be told from a purely objective viewpoint. In the retelling of stories, the director does not insert themselves into their pursuit of the truth. Subjects, their lives and stories, are to be observed, but not engaged. In contrast, the Personal Documentary offers up deeply intimate, vulnerable and subjective retelling of the filmmaker’s life. The pursuit of truth is through reflection.

Although BEBA is narrated, it is in the “showing” that we get an in depth understanding of family dynamics. For example, in one scene Beba’s older sister recounts how she repurposed used crack vials in an art project in grade school. In another moment from the film, we see the awkward, tense dynamic between Beba and her mother.

BEBA is one of the three films that I’ve recently watched that has reminded me the power of reclaiming your narrative.

Ni Aquí / Ni Allá

Ni Aquí/Ni Allá is a personal documentary that centers on a conversation between filmmaker Ley Comas and their mother about their gender identity. As the middle child of Christian pastors, Ley never imagined that transitioning was possible. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, Ley only witnessed trans people portrayed as evil characters, punchlines in movies and TV shows, or outcasts and victims. At home, anything that went against God's word was an abomination. This documentary follows Ley’s physical and psychological journey to become themself while struggling to find a middle ground with their family.

Wisdom Gone Wild

In this moving and original reflection on aging, mortality, and transformation, Rea Tajiri partners with her mother, Rose Tajiri Noda, to create a film about the final sixteen years of Rose’s life as a person living with dementia. Together, they nurture their connection through listening, art, and music. Rose performs songs from her youth, providing the soundtrack for time travel, as we witness her evolution across nine decades of living. Delicately weaving between past and present, parenting and being parented, the film reflects on the unreliability of memory and the desire to reinvent one's own life when memories fail us.

As an audience, we can only go as far into the story as the filmmaker takes us. So, it is special and poignant when a filmmaker is willing to reveal uncomfortable moments from their life.

What the directors of BEBA, Ni Aquí / Ni Allá and Wisdom Gone Wild have in common is the willingness to show that unflinching truth, that heartbreaking conversation, that uncomfortable moment without exploiting the people in their life, or themselves.

Each director takes us to the edge of that discomfort, where we our stomach turns and we want to look away but we can’t. There are moments in each film that are almost unbearable to watch at times. And, before we can pause the film for a moment’s breath, the director bring us slowly back to center. Through silence. Through a lingering question. By letting a simple action, embrace or look tell us all we need to know.

This is a subtle but powerful gift: revealing enough but not too much. Giving us enough leaves room for us to breathe in the truth of someone’s life.