A 10 year-old Latina tries to find her place in a black and white world.
From the Director...
Mimi's Portrait is my first film. The events in the film were inspired by true events in my own life. My parents who are were born in Puerto Rico, came to New York City as children, married young and worked hard. In their twenties they saved up enough money to buy their first home. I was nine years old when we moved from Manhattan to Long Island to a predominately Irish neighborhood. No one at that time apparently, had ever seen a Puerto Rican up close and personal and living next door. The kids in the neighborhood thought I was black and they referred to me as the "N" word often. I feel this is the place that made me a writer. This confusing and painful time in my life made me question who I really was. I would ask my family often if I was black. They would get angry and say absolutely not. So I wasn't white to white people and I wasn't black to my own people but in a black and white world that's all there was. Little did I know years later that the same would be true in 2005 for many other Latinos.
I never could understand why so many Latinos deny their
African heritage. It's in the history and so it is in our blood. It's
funny to me how many Caribbean Latinos (Cubans, Dominicans and Puerto
Ricans) try to escape from their past. Always hyping up the fact that
they have more Spanish and European blood than African blood.
This film is very personal
for me as are many of the plays I've written, directed and produced in
the last 10 years. The challenge for me in writing Mimi's Portrait was
to tell the story with the least amount of dialogue as possible; not
something that comes easy to a playwright. I hired a wonderful Director
of Photography named Yvie Raij who held my hand along the way. Between
my passionate vision and Yvie's artistic eye, I was able to tell the
story I wanted to tell. We used a Panasonic AG-DVX100A in 24P mode and
Yvie supervised the lighting of each scene. I learned hands on how to
edit in Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro with the help of Kathy Vega and
used DVD Studio Pro 4 to encode the final product.
I owe a big thanks to
Doris Martir who plays Abuela for singing the song "Angelitos
Negro" on the day she came to pick up her script. Without that
song, Mimi's Portrait would have been a very different movie. That
song set the tone for everything and inspired me during the editing
process.
Although I didn't have a clue about filmmaking, once I got on set, it was as if I had been there before. It was the most creatively and physically challenging experience but it also offered me the biggest personal rewards.
Linda Nieves-Powell
Writer/Director/Producer
"Without risk, there are no rewards"