SYNOPSIS

The Girl Just Doesn’t Go Away! explores the cultural and commercial fascination with the image of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. From Marilyn to Che, western culture appropriates and transforms certain individuals into symbols, reinventing them in such a way that their values and ideals can become unrecognizable. This film explores Frida’s transformation from artist to icon after her death in 1954.

Frida’s image is everywhere within mass culture! She has been transformed into an icon and an emblem of disparate agendas, from feminism to social activism to revolutionary politics; from Chicanx and Mexican identity to disability to queer representation. These are just some of the areas within which Frida Kahlo has become an inescapable reference and symbol.

We meet Mexican actress Ofelia Medina, film director Julie Taymor, author Hayden Herrera, Chicana artist Amalia Mesa Bains, arts activist Frida Kahlo Guerrila Girl, copyright lawyer Adrián Ojeda as well as contemporary artists, historians as well as fans of Frida on the streets of Coyoacan, San Francisco and McAllen, Texas. We find murals in major cities, and document as drag queens female impersonators transform into their Frida.

She is one of the most recognized influencers of our time. How did this phenomenon evolve? What would Frida have thought of seeing the infinite number of incarnations of herself that saturate the global imagination? Through these different narratives and voices we interweave these stories; as we explore the complexity of the appropriation of Frida’s image. A playful and reflective journey through the contradictions of our culture, providing a different perspective on the mythology surrounding Frida Kahlo.

"The girl just doesn’t go away! “ says Chicanx artist Amalia Mesa Bains.

SYNOPSIS

The feature-length documentary Frida's Gaze explores the cultural obsession and commercial around the image of Frida Kahlo. It's a movie that seeks to see beyond iconography and explores the history of Frida's  transformation from artist to celebrity, after her death in 1954.

Throughout the film we ask experts and admirers What would Frida have thought of seeing the infinity of incarnations of herself? that saturate the current global market.