Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Frida using the timed birth chart of artist Frida Kahlo. Themes that emerge are the desire to create beauty and meaning out of loss and darkness, the need to exert one’s autonomy in the face of near powerlessness, and the capacity to connect erotically and fraternally with others. Astrologically these themes correspond to Venus and the 5th house, the 6th and 12th houses, and the sign of Leo, especially on the Ascendant.
Distribution: Streaming on Amazon
Director: Carla Gutiérrez
Run Time: 87 minutes
Astrological data: Frida Kahlo, 6 July 1907 at 08:30a LMT, Coyoacán, Mexico, AA Rodden Rating, Source: Astro.com
Music Credit: spacedust by airton
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.476] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're unpacking the archetypal dynamics of documentaries from Sundance 2024. This is episode number seven of eight of our section on identity. And today we're going to be unpacking Frida, which is a film that is a part of the U.S. documentary competition and actually picked up the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award for the U.S. documentary that was presented to Carla Gutiérrez, who also was the director of this piece. So this is actually being distributed by Amazon. So folks who are listening to this podcast should be able to watch it ahead of listening to our conversation. So, Wonder, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to read through the synopsis.
[00:00:56.198] Wonder Bright: Frida, an intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of the iconic artist Frida Kahlo, told through her own words for the very first time, drawn from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews, and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork. Carla Gutiérrez, renowned for her masterful editing of films, including Sundance Film Festival projects, RBG in 2018, When Two Worlds Collide in 2016, and Caesar's Last Fast in 2014, brings artistry and a deep understanding of her subject to an astonishing directorial debut. Through a cacophony of rich archival sites, music, and journal entries joyfully brought to life, we become immersed in Frida's interior world, fears, arduous relationships, and events that drove her indelible artistic creations. Gutiérrez vibrantly guides us through Frida's complex relationship to her own work, navigating the tension between art as commerce and painting for pleasure and self-knowledge. With reverence, thoughtfulness, and the color of pure emotion, Frida invites us to get to know one of the greatest artists of the 20th century in a completely new way. And that synopsis was brought to us by Sundance programmer Anna Souza.
[00:02:24.133] Kent Bye: Yeah, so this is a really beautiful film to watch in terms of their translating Frida Kahlo's paintings and giving a lot of dynamic animation to them and kind of breathing them into life in a way that is really quite striking. But the other thing that I'm really taking away from this film is the depth of archival research they did to aggregate all of these letters that she had sent out. when you watch the credits there's just like a ton of different citations for all different archives they pulled together. So they're really able to pull off Frida Kahlo in her own first-person perspective from both her diaries as well as from all these letters that she wrote. So they were saying in the Q&A that there's like letters that she was writing to like the doctors about her abortion that she was like deliberating and debating and, you know, these really intimate moments that she's sharing with strangers and sometimes, you know, these doctors that she's really getting into where she was at. The film really paints a picture of Frida Kahlo from her own perspective. And during the Q&A, they said that they wanted to figure out how to immerse the audience into Frida's mind. They were saying, how can we get people to swim in her emotions and really get into her heart and hear it beat? I thought that was just such a pithy way of summarizing what they were able to accomplish in this film.
[00:03:40.449] Wonder Bright: Yeah, the more so because it captures the visceral experience of it. Immersive is the very word for this film. The artistry of how this wonderful collaborative team was able to produce this seamless, coherent piece of work from so many different sources, from the archival footage, from her diaries, from her paintings themselves, from letters she wrote to so many people, what it must have taken to comb through all of that. And that in itself is like a thing. But then for them to pull it all together so that when we're watching it, we have no sense of any of that. there's nothing in the film to bring your attention to the fact that we're not in Frida's world. They haven't left any residue of themselves in the piecing together of all of these elements. So as we're watching it, like I just completely forgot in many ways that I wasn't watching a narrative of someone's life. They found this incredible actress to give voice to Frida's words, who we never see, obviously, because she's embodying Frida's voice, she's reading Frida's letters, and we're looking at photos of Frida and moving images of Frida. as we hear the narration in Frida's words. But the actress, whose name I don't have ready access to, unfortunately, does an extraordinary job of giving voice through the careful selection from the people who made this film. None of the things that they reveal in the film were new to me. I'm aware of Frida Kahlo, I've watched films of her life. Demetra George actually uses her chart because we have a double A Rodden rating, which means somebody has the birth certificate in hand when they record the hour of her birth. So, Demetra used her chart and we watched a bio of her film in one of her classes a number of years back. So I, you know, had a more than passing familiarity with her life in a general way. But this film, it doesn't feel like a film. It feels like a transmission. Like, it feels like an extension of Kahlo’s work itself because it's so immersed in her actual art. And because of the way that the animators animated Kahlo’s work to create a new expression of it. It's really an extraordinary testimony to her life and her work. It's just beautiful. It's a really beautiful film.
[00:06:34.759] Kent Bye: Yeah, when I think about the different qualities of presence, when I think about covering immersive storytelling, and when we talk about the immersive qualities of this film, I think about how much they're really tapping into this emotional presence and the water element. Typically, I associate the water element to like film itself as a medium, whereas like the fire element and agency interactivity is a lot about video games and mental and social presence is a lot of like speaking in language and so the internet and literature and reading books and then the earth element being like embodied environmental presence so much more of an embodied experiential dimension so there's definitely some like more environmental ways that this is transporting you into the life of Frida but more than anything else this is really the center of gravity is in this water element of the emotional presence because you are actually hearing directly from Frida her emotions her experiences what she's feeling and her thoughts and how she's kind of reflecting on what everything means So, I think because they're able to draw from so much of that first-person perspective of her life, you're really getting this through line from her own experience. Like they said, they're trying to really go into her heart and to hear it beat. And so, when I think about that, it's another kind of water element. But there's also other voices that are coming in through the course of this piece. And so it's not just Frida's perspective, but you also get her friends and her associates and people who knew her. So a lot of this 11th house expression of people reflecting onto her and who she was. And also the seventh house expression of her relationships and her partners, because that ends up being a pretty central theme throughout the course of this film is her relationship with Diego Rivera. And probably the biggest center of gravity is probably the 5th house expression of her art, her creative expression of like really expressing her creative visions and what ends up being like this surrealistic twist at some point. But also another big center of gravity is the success of the injury that she goes through when she was 18 years old and how much that put her in this place of chronic pain that was inspiring so much of her creative work as well. So, there's a big part of Frida's life that's influenced by this horrible accident that she goes through when she's like 18 years old where it's like a trolley and bus collide and there's a metal rod that pierces her pelvis in a way that ends up causing her to have all sorts of surgeries and medical attention throughout the course of her life and is influencing a lot of her art. And these like 9th house journeys where she's going into traveling across the United States and other places and she doesn't really have much love for the United States and you know, she's from Mexico. So there's a way in which that there's the traveling around and sometimes feeling like a bit of a stranger in a strange land, kind of 12th house experience of not really feeling like she's really resonating with the culture that she's surrounded by in some of these different moments throughout the course of her life. But yeah, it was a really comprehensive recap of a lot of these different contextual domains. And I guess the other planetary archetype that I'd call out is Venus. just her expression of beauty and art and her creativity. And there's some other aspects with this Mars conjunct Uranus opposite her Neptune conjunct her Sun that's in this fifth house, 11th house axis that I think is also something that we should dive into as well. But I'd love to hear some of your initial reactions of some of your thoughts on some of the primary significations of this film, Frida.
[00:10:05.134] Wonder Bright: I think your framing of different elemental balances in terms of how they relate to different mediums is very interesting, and I understand why you've contextualized them in that way. And the thing about this film for me that is so striking is Frida Kahlo's personage herself, which is, to me, really dominated by this incredibly fiery energy where there's just this Phoenix like refusal to be subdued or dominated by her illness or by the man that she loves more than any other in her life, Diego Rivera. At every turn, Frida, even before her accident, is illustrating a really strong, indomitable nature that is, above everything else, intent on her own self-expression. And I think that really speaks to her Leo ascendant. So all fire sign ascendants are driven by the need to not have anyone else have any kind of power over them. And Leo ascendants have an additional flavor of really needing to be recognized for their creativity and for their contributions in the world. And so Frida's whole life really explores that theme. Like it’s, like, well, OK, but what if your husband cheats on you multiple times and leaves you all alone when you're having an abortion? What if you have a rod that strikes through the very center of your body and makes your life a constant expression of dealing with pain? What then? Well, yeah, guess what? I'm still bigger than that. I'm still more than that. I still have something really powerful to contribute. I will not surrender to these things. There's something about her very nature that is so fierce and determined and powerful. And that is one of the most overriding experiences throughout this film that despite some of the traumas that she suffered, despite the difficulties in her life, that’s not how we remember her because she shines this light around what is possible when you refuse to submit, around what is possible when you just keep going at all costs. And so, for me, the experience of watching this film was really like having a torch passed somehow, you know, and I feel like the way in which the filmmakers made the film was a reflection of her creativity and they allowed her creativity to inspire them and their own creativity. And so it's like they themselves are passing the torch through the way that they've created this piece in honor of her. So to me, this is watery in the sense that it is a film. It is watery in the sense that she lived a fully emotionally expressed life. But the main emotion to me that comes across is the will to survive, the will to live, the will to experience joy and beauty and love and Eros. She really wanted to be touched. She really wanted to touch. She really just yearned for love and created it all around her in her paintings, in her homes, in her relationships.
[00:14:06.767] Kent Bye: Yeah, I can definitely see how Frida herself has this fire element. And I guess in terms of the experience of watching the film, I felt super immersed into her emotional reality in a way that when I think of immersion, I think of what is the experience as the viewer going through the film. And there's a way that they tapped me into like the emotional life of Frida Kahlo in a way that I have not seen done very often when it comes to like this deep dive into the archives of her personal statements that she's made. But I agree with you in the sense that overall there's a other tenor of this fire element, especially with her creative expression. And I think that gets to this other signature that I was seeing just from Mars at 13 degrees Capricorn conjunct Uranus at 10 degrees Capricorn and that was opposite her Sun which is at 13 degrees and Neptune which is at 12 degrees. So, you have this opposition that's really tight that's Mars, Uranus in the fifth house and then Sun, Neptune in the 11th house. So, there's this dialectic between her fifth house creative expression that has this Uranian quality where she's willing to go above and beyond what the normal boundaries would be in terms of going after her career and talking to Diego Rivera and that Mars initiative to take action. But also, those two planets opposite, the Sun and Neptune, it feels like this turn towards surrealism, you know, going beyond the physical reality and physical representations, but into this more metaphoric and poetic, symbolic translation of these experiences and her emotions and her pain that she's going through. But yeah, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on what you're picking up in her chart.
[00:15:48.725] Wonder Bright: Yeah, the Mars opposition to her son is a really critical one, because, of course, if Mars is opposing the sun, it means two things. It means, first of all, that Mars is retrograde. And in that, it means that Mars is not behaving the way that it normally does. So when planets go retrograde, they tend to do things differently than they would normally. Mars is out of bounds as well, meaning that it is even more likely to behave in ways that are unusual, disobedient and irascible, even more domineering, even more aggressive or striking than it normally would be. Mars, of course, being in Capricorn means that it is in it's an exalted sign. So it actually has a lot of power in Capricorn. The power that comes to it comes through strategy. So normally we think of Mars as being rash and impulsive and bombastic in some way. But when it's in Capricorn, it has the power of not just being a soldier and a warrior, but also the strategist. So also the general. the person who is able to see far and then take action accordingly in ways that are more likely to benefit it. So the fact that her Mars is retrograde, exalted, and out of bounds is giving us a lot of information about the way that that Mars is going to behave. But the fact that it's exactly opposite the sun within one degree means that it is closer to the earth than it is to the sun. And that means that there's a more earthbound expression of Mars in those places. And when a planet is exactly opposite the sun, it's at its fastest motion in its retrograde space. So it has this kind of frisson to it that has like a peculiar intensity. And when you have oppositions, especially close opposition, like you have between the sun and Mars, you get this extraordinary dynamic where it almost can potentially become a bit like a conjunction. So it's a bit like trying to hold two magnets. together, but from their opposite poles. I don't know if you've ever done that. I was a bit obsessed with it when I was a kid trying to get the feel of that intensity, that vibration that you get going between two planets that are polar opposite and the way that they kind of want to flip. So when you get a strong partile opposition like that, you get that intensity. So we can see when we're looking at her chart that this is somebody who has this profound Marshall intensity to her. where that Mars actually is going to come out in ways that are certainly not expected from a woman, especially from a woman born at the turn of the 20th century, like Frida Kahlo was. She was born in 1907. The other thing that's important to understand about her son is that she's born four days before a solar eclipse. in cancer at 17 degrees and her son is at 13 degrees. So there's an additional intensity to her chart in this period of time because people born around eclipses, it means that their lights are going to be very close to the nodes. It describes a hunger in them to express their light in some way. And because Kalo's Ascendant is in Leo, that sun, which is activated by the North Node, is really desirous of having that light shine brightly. Now, Demetra uses whole signs. So if you use whole signs, then the Sun is in the 12th house. I more recently have been using quadrant house systems, and that puts the Sun in the 11th house. So depending on how you're slicing the chart, you're going to see where that light shines. So you can easily argue that the light shines in the 12th house, the house of loss and sorrows, and that this is somebody who cast light on difficult subjects in life and cast light on the losses of her light. Something that I really loved about this film is how it situates Frida Kahlo within a group of people and community who absolutely adored her. And that film gives testimony to the idea that the Sun could be in the 11th house, which was what you get with quadrant systems. And that there's this real desire to be at the center of a circle and to be really highly regarded in that circle for her creative contributions, because the Sun rules the first house in Leo, which Leo wants to be recognized for its creativity. So either way, you know, however you slice the chart, you're going to see the truth of that statement in her. There's a lot more that can be said about her chart, but what we've said thus far, I think, really illustrates that fiery nature and that ability that she had to not be dominated by the people and systems and cultural mores of the day, but to carve out her own completely unique artistic presence in the world in a way that has completely outlived her.
[00:21:16.644] Kent Bye: Yeah, and like you said, Demetra has used Frida Kahlo's chart, and I remember the workshop around the timing techniques, and so we're looking at the technique of annual perfections, and so how when you're born, you're in the 1st house perfection, and then when you turn one, you're in a 2nd house. So for every year, there's a topic of the house that's emphasized, and so when she's 18, she's in a 6th house perfection year, which one of the primary significations is the house of illness. And she goes through, you know, horrible accident where she has to go into the hospital and have all these surgeries. And so there's a way in which you can look at the timing of someone's life. And when you have a double A Rodden reading, really get into the topics. Well, even if you don't have the ascendant, you can still look at the house that's going to be emphasized. You just don't know what sign or the ruler of that house is going to be. But with Frida Kahlo's chart, we were able to dive deep into a lot of the timing of her life, which is beyond the scope of this podcast to recount that whole, you know, profections. But that was one that really struck out to me. But as we think about some of the primary significations of the film, who would you prescribe this film of Frida to?
[00:22:28.962] Wonder Bright: It's so funny because I'm not even sure if I'm ready to go there yet. When I was looking at the chart before we started talking, I was really focused on these other areas. But then when you mentioned the Mars, I had to like do this deep dive into the Mars. Which I guess I'm going to just sort of carry on with the Mars, because now that you've drawn my attention to it, I'm thinking about how if you use quadrant house systems, that Mars is in the 5th house with Uranus, as you pointed out. and it rules the 4th and the 9th houses. So there's this indication that home and family life, as well as a philosophy for living, as evidenced by the 9th house, whether that's spirituality or religion or whatever that ends up being, is going to be embodied by that Mars in the 5th house. And I think you could argue that there's a way in which Frida Kahlo created a philosophy for living which included fighting for her creativity at every stage of the journey up until very near to the very end when she was in so much pain that she was barely able to paint at all. And that that desire to fight for her creativity and to create regardless of what was happening around her, it really shows that she had this exalted expression of that, you know, and that she was supported as well, because that Mars is exalted and her father, who adored her, made sure that she had the artistic tools that she needed from very early on. But certainly once she had suffered from this accident, he made sure that she had everything she needed to create. So you can see how the Mars rules the 4th house and it's exalted and that the creation of her art was in many ways the thing that allowed her to create a philosophy for living. Mars ruling the 9th house. And so there's so many other things that we could say about her chart, we can talk about her Venus endlessly, because it rules her 10th house in Taurus, her Moon is in the last degree of Taurus, which it exalts in, and it's in the 10th house. So there's lots of things that we could say about the nature of her Venus, which is conjunct Pluto and squared by Saturn, which I mean, there's like endless wormholes. And I really, really invite people to use her chart as an entry into this because her life is so well documented and so well documented by her. You know, that's literally what she was doing with her art. And we do have a timed birth for her. So she's a really unique personage for people to study, to kind of understand some of these signatures. especially since she was born in 1907. We haven't even started talking about Pluto astrologically yet. We're sort of like on the cusp of beginning to think about these outer planets and her chart is riddled with them. So she's just interesting for a number of reasons. So in terms of who I would prescribe this chart for, I guess I just prescribed it for, you know, budding astrologers to look at, especially if you want to like have films that really help you immerse yourself into the life of someone. This film is so unusual and unique because on the one hand, it's a biopic, but maybe it's an auto-biopic. But how could it be an auto-biopic when this person has been dead for decades? But somehow that is what it feels like. And it's such a beautiful piece of work. I just can't recommend it highly enough. And I guess, you know, one of the main takeaways for me watching the film was this zest for life and how so much of the light in her life is defined by the possibility of darkness. And yet she just constantly sought the light. And I think that in many ways is all that any of us can do. And it's a beautiful illustration of astrology itself, which is a system described by light. So anyone who wants to understand how light can only be understood in context of the dark, Frida Kahlo's life and her chart is a testimony to that.
[00:27:06.262] Kent Bye: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's really, there's so much in her chart, like you said, and you know, one of the things that you're calling my attention to is this Venus conjunct Pluto squared by seventh house Saturn, because so much of her relationships having a lot of barriers and constraints with Diego Rivera, who was sleeping with so many other people to the point where Frida actually left him and they get back together at the end. But there's this deep influence of this visceral nature of Pluto that has got a lot of power dynamics happening there as well. She actually ends up with Diego at the end with a lot of conditions and constraints and restrictions as to how they're going to be together, which I thought was pulling in a lot of those Saturnian constraints in some ways.
[00:27:51.355] Wonder Bright: Yeah, she was very clear that they were not going to have sex anymore, that that was the condition of their marriage because she didn't want to engage intimately with someone who would betray her in that way. But, you know, she also pursued her own relationships. It seems like she would have certainly been loyal to Diego if he had been loyal to her. But in the absence of that, she pursued relationships with men and women freely. And her diaries make it clear that sexual erotic experiences were some of the most important to her, which makes sense. Like her 5th house is a really vibrant house. Like this is what we all know and remember her for is her 5th house, which is creativity, but it's also sexual pleasure. So, you know, like among many things, she was a woman well ahead of her time, you know, really demanding erotic and intimate satisfaction, which was denied her gender and sex. Yeah. She's so cool.
[00:29:05.560] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the things I want to bear witness to is just her art, her creative works that she's producing and how this film really animates her art in a new way and really breathes new life into it in a way that they're going through the chronology of her life and also interspersing her creative works throughout the course of the film in a somewhat chronological way as well to kind of amplify what she's talking about with the different art that she's creating in order to really dive into her own embodied experiences in life and so it was really quite striking just to be Introduced to her art in this way in a way that you can also hear her voice narrating it throughout as well. So I just want to bear witness to her creative work because it's really astounding.
[00:29:53.297] Wonder Bright: Yeah, it's an interesting feature of her work and her art that I think so many different kinds of people coming from so many different places and angles could really identify with her and identify with her expression. So I want to bear witness to the extraordinary Leonine creativity at the center of that and the filmmakers for bringing it to life for all of us and for drawing these links between Frida's life and her work that she was drawing all along because it's what her work depicts. But in doing this service to her and to us, they've made it into a whole and complete picture in a way that it never was for me before. So I just really want to bear witness to that collaborative effort to bring her life and her work to life simultaneously. Because I'm not sure it could ever really have been understood any other way.
[00:31:00.607] Kent Bye: Yeah, the filmmaker, Carla Gutiérrez, both at the beginning as she's introducing the film and at the end, made sure to bring everybody that was involved in collaborating and making this project because it was a true collaborative effort that she really wanted to emphasize. So yeah, well, that was our discussion about Frida, which is going to be releasing at some point in 2024 on Amazon. So you can check it out there. And yeah, that's all that we have for today. And I just wanted to thank you for listening to the story all the way down podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider signing up for the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
