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La regista, lesbica dichiarata, parla del suo lavoro e della sua esperienza:
My name is Marialy Rivas and I’m a 35-year-old filmmaker from Chile. I’m starting off this chronicle with this statement because it contains information that has shaped me into the woman that I am, and led me to make the films that I’m making. Because of my age, my childhood and pre-teen years were spent under a harsh military dictatorship, that of Augusto Pinochet. These were years in which thinking differently meant death. As a child, I couldn’t completely grasp this violent reality, but I was aware of the fear that crouched behind every corner of daily life. I’m Chilean; I come from a place where there has never been any official recognition of the violent past we’ve experienced as a country. Pinochet died without ever being brought to trial at any court, without even apologizing for all the pain he inflicted upon our society. In fact, he actually died showing pride in what he accomplished – in similar fashion to his followers (and this is at least a 40% of the country).
I profoundly believe that a country that is still unable to deal truthfully and face to face with these traumatic events is a country in which violence ends up spreading and manifesting itself in all different kinds of ways. One of them is a very deeply rooted homophobia.
I’m a lesbian, everyone around me knows it, and I don’t really care if it bothers anybody else. I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful family and friends, but I live in a country in which Carlos Larrain, the president of the ruling political party, made the following declaration regarding gay marriage on television about a year ago: “Why should we support the gay community? If we did so, we would have to support groups of people that propose…I don’t know… relationships with children, or the people who support euthanasia. Because in this matter of ‘sexual orientation’ –and this is what I’ve heard- there is a wide variety of options. I understand there are also people who want to have sex with animals; there is literature on this, on zoophiles. So I don’t believe that a country’s state policies should work for different sexual preferences…”
A liberal interest group present on Twitter, Movilh (Chile’s main LGTB organization) complained and asked for a retraction. Mr. Larrain laughed it off and said he didn’t believe it was really necessary. No media took actions in the matter. Nobody really cared.
Most people in Chile don’t even realize this sort of stance is rude, hurtful, hateful, and finally, profoundly ignorant.
In Chile, it is of good taste not to say that you are gay, even if everybody knows it. People are usually infuriated by your sexuality if you are open. Nobody wants to know, so nobody wants to tell.
It is in this context that I ran into the blog of Young&Wild — a blog that was filled with either vibrant tales of her blunt bisexual encounters or tender and funny stories about her religious family. I fell in love instantly. The blog was written anonymously, so I couldn’t figure out if the tales were true or inventions made up by a very smart woman. She used teenage slang, mashing up words to create new concepts that spread quickly throughout the web. I was fascinated by her as were a lot of other followers. Some of them even proclaimed her “The new bisexual Messiah”. She was brave enough to show the world her inner fracture: a very biting sexual nature that was completely at odds with her religious upbringing. I knew that I had to meet her and work with her (though I didn’t know how or for what), and after a few emails, she agreed.
She was a young girl, a literature student, very shy but smart and darkly funny. There was a mystery about her that I couldn’t unlock right away. I told her that I wanted to make a movie; she just nodded in consent. Up until this day, her very orthodox and repressive parents have no idea that this film has been made.
We had weeks of interviews, in which I tried to approach her life from as many points of view as possible. She showed me pictures of her youth; I visited her parents’ house when they weren’t there; I went to her church. Finally, I was ready to start writing.
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