This story is part of True/False Conversations, a series of in-depth interviews with the filmmakers of this year’s True/False Film Fest. Find the full series here.
Carolina González Valencia’s newest film, How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps, is a collaboration with her mother, Beatriz Valencia. In it, they create a shared fantasy to explore their lived experiences of immigration, labor and womanhood. KBIA’s Sabrina Pan spoke with Gonzalez ahead of the film’s premiere at True/False. Here's an excerpt from their conversation:
Sabrina Pan: First of all, Carolina, I wanted to ask you about your journey into becoming a filmmaker, and how you first came up with this idea for the film.
Carolina González Valencia: So I was very interested in performance, in writing and in making things. And so I started combining everything in one place through animation and writing. I took this class of Latin American documentary, and it was the first time I saw myself reflected on the screen, where I was able to see people like me and a lot of people in a diaspora. That moved me so much that I ... wanted to create stories and to participate in a dialogue in film.
Pan: Your mom is playing this character who's an author of the book in some moments, but also in those other moments she's just being herself. Could you tell me a little bit more about how that all came to be?
González Valencia: I think that came because we were having this exchange where I was asking her to write different things about cleaning, and, and she was enjoying writing. So she started improvising, and she was so good at it. It was this very beautiful game where we both were vulnerable, but also playful.
And it just became a spark, because I was also very interested in that line between what is fiction and what is not, because everything that she made out, it was based in her life, so it was not totally fiction. And I really loved that, that it was just that she was playing with her reality and seeing it from a different perspective.
"It was this very beautiful game where we both were vulnerable, but also playful."Carolina Gonzalez
Pan: Were you two able to bond through the making of this film, and did it allow you guys to understand each other's experiences as immigrants in the U.S.?
González Valencia: I have always admired my mother, but through the process of making the film, the admiration, like, grew. And I think it also, me getting older and understanding like, "Oh my God, she went through this journey" — and many women like my mother — to another country without language and with all these barriers. And they provide so much to themselves and to their family through this job. I think that, that also something that the film provided is, like, the space for both of us to, to acknowledge our wounds, and to create around them.
Pan: Through this film, what do you hope that the viewers are able to experience and kind of take away from all these stories and perspectives?
González Valencia: Ah, many things! I think the first one is to remember how amazing and joyful and beautiful we are. The idea is that you see these people, this family, in all of our complexities, to get away from those very vague representations that put us in a pocket and erase our humanity. We're part of this society. We have been and we will be, and this is just honoring that space.