Visiting Filmmakers Series: Rebeca Huntt with Beba
Thursday, April 6, 2023 6:00 PM EDT
Online Location
Winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2023 Independent Spirit Awards.
First-time feature filmmaker Rebeca "Beba" Huntt undertakes an unflinching exploration of her own identity in the remarkable coming-of-age documentary/cinematic memoir BEBA. Reflecting on her childhood and adolescence in New York City as the daughter of a Dominican father and Venezuelan mother, Huntt investigates the historical, societal, and generational trauma she's inherited and ponders how those ancient wounds have shaped her, while simultaneously considering the universal truths that connect us all as humans. Throughout Beba, Huntt searches for a way to forge her own creative path amid a landscape of intense racial and political unrest. Poetic, powerful and profound, Beba is a courageous, deeply human self-portrait of an Afro-Latina artist hungry for knowledge and yearning for connection (Neon).
Niani Scott writes, "As an audience member, I felt the new age way of life take over my body: 'Black women deserve ease.' Huntt is healing through a beautifully produced film, and she/we DESERVE THIS (space, time, and resource). Breaking generational cycles seems trendy, but it is hard work. Huntt’s grand direction makes the process seem possible. While this is a work to reveal the illusion of meta narratives, it’s also an outpouring of love and truth, one that documents a movement with a keen eye" (RogerEbert.com 2022).
"Ultimately," writes Ronda Racha Penrice in The Wrap, "the promise of “Beba” is that it can be a launching pad for more narratives that go beyond generalities to get more specific and more real, a welcome tree of possibilities that will, one would hope, bear fruit for years to come."
Listen: "Rebeca Huntt on Beba," "Pure Nonfiction: Inside Documentary Film," Podcast with Thom Powers, Dec 2022.
Read "‘Wolfpack’ and ‘Betty’ Filmmaker Crystal Moselle Interviews Rebeca Huntt About ‘Beba,’" IndieWire July 9, 2022.
This event is presented by Visiting Filmmakers Series; College of Humanities and Social Sciences; College of Visual and Performing Arts; Film at Mason; English Department; Global Affairs; History and Art History; University Life; and Women and Gender Studies.
#VisitingFilmmakersSeries #FilmAtMason #Beba
For more information:
Anjuli Singh, asingh80@gmu.edu, Exhibitions and Office Coordinator, Film at Mason
Cynthia Fuchs cfuchs@gmu.edu, Director, Visiting Filmmakers Series at Mason; Director, Film at Mason
