October 12, 2023 • 32 mins
A member of The Tour ‘23’s VS20, Sanchez exploded onto the scene when her short film Bebe premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Her style is a mix of darkness and beauty, and for this project, Sanchez uses her signature aesthetic in the storytelling around women and their relationship to Bogota. In this interview, she urges listeners to reconsider stereotypes and examine the usefulness (and beauty) of female rage.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to VS Voices. I'm Amanda Decadiney. Christina Sanchez is
a Bogatar based filmmaker and a member of this year's
Bogatar House. In this interview, we took about growing up
during some of the darkest years of the Colombian Civil War,
the transformative power of female rage, and the impact Christina
hopes to have through her burgeoning film career. Good morning, Christina,
(00:24):
or well, I don't even know if it's good morning
for you. Where are you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm in Bogota, It's noon. Where are you?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh, so you're actually a little behind for me.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I'm a little behind. So Christina, you're a filmmaker, a screenwriter,
and a member of the Bogatar House for this year's
VS twenty Your short film Baby had its world premiere
at the Tribeca Film Festival in twenty twenty two. That
is a huge feat for any filmmaker. Can you tell
me what Baby is about? Please?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
So, Baby is loosely based on my childhood experiences, and
it's just a small character study of the complexities of
girlhood and growing up and feeling isolation and insecurities.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Something that so many of us can relate to. Yes,
what were some of the ideas that you were wanting
to address through that film.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I think I just wanted to normalize how lonely and
dark a period like childhood actually is. I think it's
very romanticized, especially for girls, and at least in my case,
you know, I had to grow up pretty early and
I lost you know, that that likeness and that innocence
(01:44):
that came with it. So I just wanted to portray,
you know, that moment when you're supposed to be a
baby but you actually are not, and how people around
you start to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Your childhood took place during what you called the worst
period of the Colombian Civil War. How would you describe
the climate that you were raised in.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I feel the civil war was so it was a
very long period. It's actually one of the long I
think it's the longest civil war in the world, like
sixty years.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Gosh.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I think it's very brutal because, especially people who grow
up away from the conflict, as was my case, you know,
in bigger cities, because the conflict was mostly in the countryside,
people grow up very used to violence and just brutality,
and like there's some sort of collective anesthesia, you know,
(02:39):
where it's just normal that that is going on.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
A desensitization, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And you know if you're born like that and your
parents grew up like my parents grew up in the
sixties and that's when it started. So it's just this
normalization that violence is a part of your country and
your code and your language.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So we were very fortunate to not.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Have the conflict, you know, be a actual part of
our lives to affect us. But especially when I was little,
you know, Pauloskard he was just right about to get murdered.
But there were many car bombs, and many it was
just normal, you know, like, oh yeah, there's another car bomb,
and oh yeah, there's another plane that got hijacked, and
(03:25):
oh yeah, there's another presidential candidate that got murdered. And
I feel that I was in one of these generations
where we started to grow up questioning how normal it
was for this country to be so violent and the
government to be so violent and so brutal. And yeah,
just I feel people in Colombia have, unfortunately violence in
(03:47):
their gene code.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You know, it's.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Something that just becomes a part of society, which is
pretty devastating.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
When did you realize that not everybody in the world
was growing up with this experience.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
At least in my case and many people my age.
I feel the most brutal part isn't only the fact
that it's going on, you know, in gorilla groups, but
also like the government itself is selling violence. And it
just came to a point when I started to question
what the government was doing because it's something that my
(04:25):
family and my elders and in general everyone wasn't doing,
you know, because it's in their gene. It's like, oh, no,
it's normal. You have to respond to violence with more violence.
It's normal for civilians to disappear, and it's like, no,
I think it's actually not. There is like a generational
breach of some sort where we just started to really
(04:49):
question it, and I do feel that the Internet has
an important play in it. We just started getting information
from other places and we started to form ourselves, and
I feel like our parents and our grandparents and our
uncles and everyone, there's very limited access.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
To news for them.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's just like the same three platforms and the same
three outlets, and they all come from political power. I
just finished succession. It's not only in the US, you know,
in general, whoever controls the news controls the country.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
How do you think the war influenced your relationship to creativity.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
That's a very interesting question. I wasn't directly affected by
the war. I came from, you know, much more privilege.
But I do feel everyone who grows up normalizing a
war has some sort of code broken within them. I
feel more than the war. Just being Colombian, We're a
very visceral country. Everything comes from within, from the guts,
(05:51):
from boiling blood. Where I grew up here, everything is
just very impulsive and we are very hot headed about everything.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I looked at on your website. You have something called
a mood board. Yes, and I loved I looked at
everything that you had on your website. The thing that
I loved was your mood board because I love to
see the art and the imagery that was inspiring to you,
and actually a lot of it did have guts in it.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, it's I feel that's one of the reasons why
I was cast in the VS. Twenty because.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
The relationship with the body is one of the most
central themes. Inhabiting bodies is just such a unique and
such a dark and deep and beautiful experience, and I
don't feel we talk about it that much.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It's just like the war.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I feel we've normalized living inside our bodies and we
don't have an awareness of how miraculous and strange it
is to be in these machines.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
In your interview with VS, you wrote that the themes
that you most like to explore in your stories are femininity,
the human body, and darkness, which are all subjects that
I too love. But can you tell me how those
three ideas intersect in your work.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I feel this first call to anatomy and darkness came
from my own experience when I was fourteen, just after
the baby period of the short film Just Coming of Age,
and I was very closed in as a kid, and
I had many dark thoughts and many dark feelings, and
I had no tools and no perception of how to
(07:38):
communicate them. And then a doctor found a nodul in
my thyroid, and each year it started to get bigger
and bigger, and I had to be subjected to some
pretty painful procedures. They would be like, please lie down
on the table and they would just like make my
head hang and be like, don't swallow, this is going
to hurt a little, and just like a huge syringe
into my throat just to you know, drain the biopsy. Yeah,
(08:02):
And that was like when I was twelve, and then
I had to do it each year, and there came
a point where I was like, Okay, this is only
getting bigger and we're starting to see calcium and.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
That's like a big no no.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's like a very close cousin to what could be
a tumor.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
So I had to have my thyroid removed.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And I was fourteen, and it was just like a
very open body experience. I had to have like this
a huge scar on my neck and for like the
first few weeks, I had to have a like a
bag and just because they had to wait for the
result like is it benign or is it malign? And
it's like maybe they would have to take out the
(08:43):
rest of the thyroid, so I would just have blood
coming out of like a little tube into a bag
that I would have to carry around. And it just
completely changed my perception on the machine I was operating
in and just understanding that there is a connection to
the darker places in your mind and your body and
(09:04):
you know, it's no coincidence that I just all of
these thoughts and feelings and negative emotions got stuck there
in the throat and that's where it formed, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So voice or your inability you said you had any
inability to or didn't have any tools to process that exactly,
So it got stuck, it makes sense.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, And it got stuck and I ended up having
to you know, like it sounds very dramatic, but like
being mutilated, you know, just like having an incision, and
it just really changed the way I perceived myself. And
I feel that was like the pivotal point where I
just started to understand how complex and intertwined these three
(09:46):
aspects are.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You've said that being a woman is dark and that
you like that, and you've spoken a little bit about
where that thought might have come from, But can you
expand on that for me?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, I feel people, you know, because of these Greek
dramaturgical and biblical narratives, associate darkness to negativity and associate
darkness to something that isn't good. And I think that's
the first step in rewriting. I don't believe in light
(10:22):
as good and dark as bad. I just feel it's
a natural part of who we are. And because of
that biblical you know, narrative that we've been taught those
darker sites. We as women, I feel we've been conditioned
and taught to repress them. It's not necessarily that being
a woman is an absolutely dark experience. It's that it
is also dark and that is good. I mean we
(10:45):
as women, our right of passage is bleeding and that
is a very violent experience, especially the first time, and
for some women it is violent every month. You know,
if you have endometriosis and you have you know, other conditions,
and you're just like taught to shut it out, deal
with it, not bother anyone, go to work and don't complain.
(11:08):
And I think it's absurd.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, I mean my feeling is that darkness is crucial
and is just as valuable because without darkness, we don't
know that there's light. Yeah, we must have pole opposites
in order to recognize light as well, exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And I mean the universe came from darkness, that's right.
You know, existence and life came from darkness. At some
point in time, there was nothing but darkness. And from
darknesses where things come and start to sprout even light itself. Yeah,
so yeah, I think it's it's an interesting way to
see femininity and just rewrite it and normalize that we
(11:50):
as women are allowed to, you know, like war, like
that darker side is associated to men, like war and
violence and strength.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And which we have to if you look back, exactly
historically there were female leaders of armies that were women
who were warriors. That is an aspect of womanhood that
is often written out of history.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, exactly. So it's just understanding that just because that's
what's been written for the past, I don't know, two millenniums,
that doesn't mean that our nature, you know, our human nature,
anatomical nature, isn't still writing these codes, isn't still holding
you know, and storing this darkness. And I feel it's
(12:38):
so much more, it's so much healthier to just acknowledge
it and normalize it and make it a part of
our narrative, even from girlhood.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Absolutely, because suppression makes people feel that there's something wrong
with them exactly, and exactly there's not. You know, women's
anger is a subject that I have spent a lot
of time thinking about just because of the cultural norms
around women expressing rage and how it is so socially
(13:09):
unacceptable for a woman to be angry, and yet of
course we have that emotion. It's there for a reason
to also guide us away from and towards a better place.
And I think that it's even though we're in twenty
twenty three, some of the more darker emotions are still
considered to be unappealing for women, and we're taught from
(13:32):
a young age to not show that.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, I absolutely agree, and it's exactly what you're saying.
We are taught that there's something wrong with us, you know,
like I must have an anger problem or you know,
even sexually, our sexual awakening is very lonely because it's
brought on to shame. You know. I feel like I
grew up with many boyfriends, you know, like surrounded by men,
(13:58):
and they would constantly talk about their bodies, their hairs, growing,
their penuses, having erections like oh I don't have semen
coming out of me?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Oh you don't. I do.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Like it was very uh accepted and collective, and it's like, yeah,
like boys are supposed to, you know, masturbate twenty four
to seven, then they're supposed to be thinking about sex,
and that's in their nature, And I was masturbating all
day long, and I was thinking about sex all day long,
not even the act of penetration, because that's where I
feel is one of.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
The main problems.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It's people associate sex to the sexual act, and it's
so much more complex than that. When you're nine years old,
you're not thinking no about the act of penetration itself,
but you are thinking about sex. You're thinking about your body,
your feelings, You're thinking about so many things that are
going on. And we don't have that same you know, space.
(14:53):
We don't have language.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
We don't have it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Think how many words there are to describe men and
boys debating. Yeah, there's so many words, And when you
think about what there is for women, there is a
couple of really bad descriptions.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
There isn't a language around female pleasure exactly. And you're right,
that is that is a conversation that does need to
be normalized, because otherwise those feelings get pushed underground again exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And a female female pleasure doesn't start when it's acceptable
for women to have.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Sex, starts way earlier.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Exactly, just as it is for boys. I mean boys
like a cousin of mine. She has a son and
he's I don't know, like seven, and he loves what's
what he feels down there, you know. And that's that's
the thing. It's not because he wants to have sex.
He just is becoming aware of these feelings. And it
starts with us as well. But we are taught that
it's only normal for us to feel sexuality rather than
(15:54):
sexual desire, which I feel are two different things.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yes, how do you differentiate those two things?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I feel sexual desire has to do with others and
sexuality has to do with yourself.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Hmm. And you have to know yourself. You have to
understand and have a relationship with your sexuality with yourself
before you can really be with somebody else exactly. Otherwise
you have no dialogue and you have no experience and
no knowledge of your own body and what you like
(16:28):
and what feels good and what you don't like and
what doesn't feel good.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
And I feel that's why for so many young women
and men as well, their first sexual experience is terrible.
I feel it's more the people I know whose first
sexual experience isn't a good one because you know, they
didn't have the tools to understand what they needed to
get from that, And because they're associating their sexuality with
(16:55):
sexual desire, and it's probably making things, you know, forced.
So I just definitely feel, you know, like that darkness,
that anatomy, that femininity and as well masculinity.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
But because we have masculinity.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Sure, it's an aspect of being female.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, it's just such for me.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's just such a pivotal and important part of my
identity and our identity. And I do feel that that
can condition your whole life. That can definitely take a
toll on you and condition who you are as a person,
as a professional, you know, dealing with negative emotions, as
a sexual being, it's just going to be in every
(17:37):
aspect of your life.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, it definitely prohibits you from a full expression and
a full embodiment of all aspects of yourself. Yeah. And
as a woman who has opinions and who has spoken
about these narratives for many, many years, as I'm sure
you've experienced, not everybody is welcoming of these conversations. There
(18:02):
is a patriarchal system that is set up to keep
women in a more friendly zone.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Less empowered and so I think the trick for me
at least has been to find professionally people that I
can collaborate with who also speak this language and who
are looking to show a fuller expression of what it
means to be feminine and what it means to be
someone who identifies as being a woman today. And I'm
(18:32):
curious what ideas you're hoping to explore through your film
with VS.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, I definitely wanted to reinterpret two terms that I
feel are very stereotype, which are femininity and being you know,
a Latina woman. So that was my starting point. And
you know, for me, it's no coincidence that it's the
Bogota House. So what I wanted to do was to
(19:00):
rite a correlation between what it is to inhabit a
city as Bogota and a body identifying as a woman
and navigating the two because I did find that there
are just many different ways in which they're the same
thing and in which they are not. But Bogota is
just this beautiful and brutal and vast and chaotic place,
(19:25):
and I would use all of those words to describe
our bodies as well.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I love those connections you've made.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, Yeah, and that was my starting point. I feel
like that was the pitch that they were like, okay, sold,
we like it. And definitely, you know, there is this
idea of navigating a woman body that's like very conditioned
and very oh it's this and that and that's just
about it. And it's the same with being you know,
a Latina and a Colombian. There's so much more going on,
(19:56):
and I feel like there are so many layers and
vibrations and connecttions and just so many cables, you know,
going through different places that I thought were interesting to rewrite,
you know, like for me, the best example is the
Mexico and Latin America filter in movies, where it's like
if anyone's like in a net Latin American place, it's
(20:18):
just like a very yellow and warm and like arid
filter and everything's.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Like super hystereotype. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And I was like, Okay, well, if I'm going to
have the chance to show what it is to be
a Colombian woman and what it is to navigate femininity
in a place like Bogota, I want to start by
showing that, you know, this is completely different. We're a
gray city, we're a green city, and it's just like
a collision between concrete and vegetation, which I feel is
(20:48):
very similar to experiencing, you know, in the bodies, you know,
the rational and the intelligence and the thought processing versus
the wilder, more visceral and.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Just and the emotions.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah, and the emotion exactly. And there is a strong
collision in Bohota, as you will see. You have these huge,
absolutely immense and vast mountains that's around the city, and
you have these buildings who are absolutely you know, man
made skyscrapers, whatever you want, but compared to the immensity
(21:22):
of that mountain, they're just you know, like a little
a little part of something so much bigger.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I can't wait to see it. What impact do you
hope to have with this film?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
In my case?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You know, I was asked to make these specific portraits
about these amazing women, women that I was so honored
and humbled to work with. And I guess I just
wanted to normalize and show that our experiences don't have
to be you know, like spectacular and glamorous and like
absolutely breathtaking for us to be special. So I try to,
(22:01):
you know, just show very ordinary settings, very ordinary scenes
of ourselves, our lives, and who we are when we
are by ourselves, because I feel that people.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Are the most interesting when they're alone.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
The things that they do.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, that's when you really are yourself. Every time you
stop being alone, you have a mask, and it's normal.
It's part of you know, our psychology, it's part of
the construction of the ego. But when you are by
yourself is when you are you at your rost and
you're purist. And I just had to find the trust
(22:39):
and to find these scenes with all of the subjects.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I just wanted it to be very real and very raw.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And how did you work with your subjects to find
what that moment was where they felt the most authentic.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I feel just like directing. If you're directing you know
an actor or an actress or writing a character, it's
just a and being patient and finding it. It took
many months of conversation and gaining their trust. Like I
didn't want them to do anything that they like. I
never wrote a scene.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Hmm.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I thought it was very bold of me to, you know,
I've been thinking how about this. What I did was
listen to them and from what they would tell me,
I would find the scenes and I would.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Ask them like it was organic.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, like do you feel comfortable showing this?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And what were some of the questions that you ask
people when you asked them to fill out question as?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
They were very theme So it was like many questions,
you know, like when did you become aware of your body?
I did ask them the question of like do you
feel navigating your body is the same as navigating bobata?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
That was one of the main questions.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I also like to talk a lot about, you know, loneliness,
like do you feel lonely or do you feel alone? Like?
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Those are two very different things.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
They really are, aren't they?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And uh like do you feel femininity is a lonely experience?
Just like very There were like thirty questions and they
were all regarding the body, the city, loneliness, alienation. It
was just very interesting to see how everyone responded in
such different ways, which just shows you how complex it
(24:24):
is to exist.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I guess I sometimes I.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Feel I sound very emo, but I think it's from
like it is complicated to exist. Human existence is It's
very complicated. Yeah, it really is. We need to be
honest about that. So did you film them and do
still portraits or was it just moving image. It was
just moving image, but yeah, they were like moving portraits.
(24:48):
But then we did something that was very interesting because
the two aspects were the portraits, and then they're like,
you need to do a collective portrait. And for me,
immediately the image of the collective portrait was the five
of us sitting at a table sharing food, you know,
breaking bread. And I also feel like in many cultures
(25:09):
this is like the table is the place, you know,
where where you share, but especially in Latin American culture,
breaking bread and sitting at the table, there is like
we are very warm people and there is something very
familiar about sitting at a table with someone. And from
there it evolved to something even more beautiful. And it's
(25:32):
that Lorena, she became a very close friend and this process,
she is the painter. She ended up then doing this
beautiful painting of five women sitting at a table.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
And the two of us collaborated into making a living
portrait of her painting. So we just like I wanted
to recreate it exactly the same. There were like even
some props and aspects that we used in both and
it was just like this very silent, very moody shot
of the five of us in exactly the same positions
(26:06):
on the table, looking at the camera, just as Lorena's
subjects are looking at the viewer.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh my gosh, I want to see this. I want
to see all of this work.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
It was very beautiful. And from there the table just
became something that I've also liked to explore, and it
is that we as women and as people. I mean,
I feel everyone has this individual experience of isolation, of navigation,
of you know, going through life, even in cities. And
(26:37):
when you converge and understand that this is a collective experience,
and that loneliness is a collective experience, and feeling confused
is a collective experience, and insecurity is a collective experience.
I feel there's something really special about that, especially when
you open up yourself to other women who you don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, your destigmatizing very normal emotions and experiences which are
really it's really important.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Yeah, and just seeing your if you carry your whole
life secrets and insecurities and just so much you know,
darkness within you and you see them reflected on other people.
I feel that's just it's almost like an orgasmic experience.
It's such a sense of bodily relief to see that
(27:28):
you know what you were saying. Suppression makes you feel
there's something wrong with you. And the moment you don't
suppress and you see that it's normal, it just becomes
an amazing experience. And that table became like a four hour,
five hour conversation between the five of us, just understanding
that yes, we are alone, but no, we are not alone.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Well, the opposite of suppression is connection for me.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Exactly, Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
What was something that surprise to you about being a
part of this process with VS?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
For one, I was very surprised that we managed to
pull it off, because I was absolutely I was very
frightened with how I was going to be able to
do it. And then the other thing that really surprised
me was the interview process. I had never done interviews
like that. I had to interview all of the other
women and they were like five hour interviews. So we
(28:27):
had the five hour table conversation and then each day
would be like five hours speaking to the rest. And
I am an extremely sensitive and empathetic person, so at
the end of each interview, I would be crying and
I would be like very emotionally, you know, drained and
(28:48):
it was pretty incredible. We were all like, so, who's
the biggest influence in your life? And like, even before answering,
we would just like start crying and reminiscing and speaking
about our grandparents and that was something we all had
in common, and I thought that was pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
So why do you think that it's important for the VS.
Fashion Show to be reimagined as it is being as
opposed to it disappearing and never coming back.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I think that's a good question.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
I feel disappearing and never coming back is just the
easy way out because it does not require redemption and listen,
I was a part of me was very skeptical about
this whole process, and I think most of the women
cast were just because you know, what the VS. Fashion
(29:39):
Show used to represent and especially how I feel it
used to mate us all feel, which was like, Okay,
we are absolute mortals and this is something that will
never be a part of the conversation. And in the end,
I decided to just take a leap.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And for me, I'm very curious. I have no idea
what's going to come out.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Because it's like it's twenty artists, plus you know, the
incredible creative directors. We had, you know, Lola, who in
my case was who guided me creatively and gave me
all of the indications for the movie, for the documentary.
You only know what you did, yes, and other than that,
it's just like this. I don't know if it's called
(30:24):
like that in English, that exquisite corpse. That's how it's called.
In Spanish, it is excusito, which is just like this
amazing Frankenstein of just like a lot of patches of
different people and they become this huge thing.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Become a new body with everybody's mock and everyone's piece
is put together exactly.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
It's a Frankenstein and it's the same as the Darkness thing.
I don't see that as a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I don't either. It's actually highly collaborative and it's showing
unity and shared perspectives and allowing for different perspectives. Yeah,
I am so excited to see not only your work,
but all of the women's work who have been a
part of reimagining this epic show and opportunity, and I
(31:14):
just can't wait to see it, and even more so
after speaking to you, I'm so curious and I just
want to thank you for your time and for your insight,
and I look forward to the day where I can
actually see this come to life. You have been listening
to VS Voices, the official companion podcast to the VS
World Tour. My thanks to today's guest, and if you
(31:37):
love our show, please comment, like, and follow us wherever
you listen to your favorite podcasts, and as always, you
can join me a Man to Decademy on Instagram. VS
Voices is part of Victoria's Secrets, ongoing commitment to creating
positive change for women. Together, we are amplifying the voices
and perspectives of women from all backgrounds. Please remember that
(32:01):
sharing stories brings us closer together. Thank you for listening.
Welcome to VS Voices. I'm Amanda Decadiney. Christina Sanchez is
a Bogatar based filmmaker and a member of this year's
Bogatar House. In this interview, we took about growing up
during some of the darkest years of the Colombian Civil War,
the transformative power of female rage, and the impact Christina
hopes to have through her burgeoning film career. Good morning, Christina,
(00:24):
or well, I don't even know if it's good morning
for you. Where are you.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm in Bogota, It's noon. Where are you?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh, so you're actually a little behind for me.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I'm a little behind. So Christina, you're a filmmaker, a screenwriter,
and a member of the Bogatar House for this year's
VS twenty Your short film Baby had its world premiere
at the Tribeca Film Festival in twenty twenty two. That
is a huge feat for any filmmaker. Can you tell
me what Baby is about? Please?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
So, Baby is loosely based on my childhood experiences, and
it's just a small character study of the complexities of
girlhood and growing up and feeling isolation and insecurities.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Something that so many of us can relate to. Yes,
what were some of the ideas that you were wanting
to address through that film.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I think I just wanted to normalize how lonely and
dark a period like childhood actually is. I think it's
very romanticized, especially for girls, and at least in my case,
you know, I had to grow up pretty early and
I lost you know, that that likeness and that innocence
(01:44):
that came with it. So I just wanted to portray,
you know, that moment when you're supposed to be a
baby but you actually are not, and how people around
you start to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Your childhood took place during what you called the worst
period of the Colombian Civil War. How would you describe
the climate that you were raised in.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I feel the civil war was so it was a
very long period. It's actually one of the long I
think it's the longest civil war in the world, like
sixty years.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Gosh.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I think it's very brutal because, especially people who grow
up away from the conflict, as was my case, you know,
in bigger cities, because the conflict was mostly in the countryside,
people grow up very used to violence and just brutality,
and like there's some sort of collective anesthesia, you know,
(02:39):
where it's just normal that that is going on.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
A desensitization, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And you know if you're born like that and your
parents grew up like my parents grew up in the
sixties and that's when it started. So it's just this
normalization that violence is a part of your country and
your code and your language.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So we were very fortunate to not.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Have the conflict, you know, be a actual part of
our lives to affect us. But especially when I was little,
you know, Pauloskard he was just right about to get murdered.
But there were many car bombs, and many it was
just normal, you know, like, oh yeah, there's another car bomb,
and oh yeah, there's another plane that got hijacked, and
(03:25):
oh yeah, there's another presidential candidate that got murdered. And
I feel that I was in one of these generations
where we started to grow up questioning how normal it
was for this country to be so violent and the
government to be so violent and so brutal. And yeah,
just I feel people in Colombia have, unfortunately violence in
(03:47):
their gene code.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
You know, it's.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Something that just becomes a part of society, which is
pretty devastating.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
When did you realize that not everybody in the world
was growing up with this experience.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
At least in my case and many people my age.
I feel the most brutal part isn't only the fact
that it's going on, you know, in gorilla groups, but
also like the government itself is selling violence. And it
just came to a point when I started to question
what the government was doing because it's something that my
(04:25):
family and my elders and in general everyone wasn't doing,
you know, because it's in their gene. It's like, oh, no,
it's normal. You have to respond to violence with more violence.
It's normal for civilians to disappear, and it's like, no,
I think it's actually not. There is like a generational
breach of some sort where we just started to really
(04:49):
question it, and I do feel that the Internet has
an important play in it. We just started getting information
from other places and we started to form ourselves, and
I feel like our parents and our grandparents and our
uncles and everyone, there's very limited access.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
To news for them.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's just like the same three platforms and the same
three outlets, and they all come from political power. I
just finished succession. It's not only in the US, you know,
in general, whoever controls the news controls the country.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
How do you think the war influenced your relationship to creativity.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
That's a very interesting question. I wasn't directly affected by
the war. I came from, you know, much more privilege.
But I do feel everyone who grows up normalizing a
war has some sort of code broken within them. I
feel more than the war. Just being Colombian, We're a
very visceral country. Everything comes from within, from the guts,
(05:51):
from boiling blood. Where I grew up here, everything is
just very impulsive and we are very hot headed about everything.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I looked at on your website. You have something called
a mood board. Yes, and I loved I looked at
everything that you had on your website. The thing that
I loved was your mood board because I love to
see the art and the imagery that was inspiring to you,
and actually a lot of it did have guts in it.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, it's I feel that's one of the reasons why
I was cast in the VS. Twenty because.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
The relationship with the body is one of the most
central themes. Inhabiting bodies is just such a unique and
such a dark and deep and beautiful experience, and I
don't feel we talk about it that much.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It's just like the war.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I feel we've normalized living inside our bodies and we
don't have an awareness of how miraculous and strange it
is to be in these machines.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
In your interview with VS, you wrote that the themes
that you most like to explore in your stories are femininity,
the human body, and darkness, which are all subjects that
I too love. But can you tell me how those
three ideas intersect in your work.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
I feel this first call to anatomy and darkness came
from my own experience when I was fourteen, just after
the baby period of the short film Just Coming of Age,
and I was very closed in as a kid, and
I had many dark thoughts and many dark feelings, and
I had no tools and no perception of how to
(07:38):
communicate them. And then a doctor found a nodul in
my thyroid, and each year it started to get bigger
and bigger, and I had to be subjected to some
pretty painful procedures. They would be like, please lie down
on the table and they would just like make my
head hang and be like, don't swallow, this is going
to hurt a little, and just like a huge syringe
into my throat just to you know, drain the biopsy. Yeah,
(08:02):
And that was like when I was twelve, and then
I had to do it each year, and there came
a point where I was like, Okay, this is only
getting bigger and we're starting to see calcium and.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
That's like a big no no.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's like a very close cousin to what could be
a tumor.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
So I had to have my thyroid removed.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And I was fourteen, and it was just like a
very open body experience. I had to have like this
a huge scar on my neck and for like the
first few weeks, I had to have a like a
bag and just because they had to wait for the
result like is it benign or is it malign? And
it's like maybe they would have to take out the
(08:43):
rest of the thyroid, so I would just have blood
coming out of like a little tube into a bag
that I would have to carry around. And it just
completely changed my perception on the machine I was operating
in and just understanding that there is a connection to
the darker places in your mind and your body and
(09:04):
you know, it's no coincidence that I just all of
these thoughts and feelings and negative emotions got stuck there
in the throat and that's where it formed, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So voice or your inability you said you had any
inability to or didn't have any tools to process that exactly,
So it got stuck, it makes sense.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, And it got stuck and I ended up having
to you know, like it sounds very dramatic, but like
being mutilated, you know, just like having an incision, and
it just really changed the way I perceived myself. And
I feel that was like the pivotal point where I
just started to understand how complex and intertwined these three
(09:46):
aspects are.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
You've said that being a woman is dark and that
you like that, and you've spoken a little bit about
where that thought might have come from, But can you
expand on that for me?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, I feel people, you know, because of these Greek
dramaturgical and biblical narratives, associate darkness to negativity and associate
darkness to something that isn't good. And I think that's
the first step in rewriting. I don't believe in light
(10:22):
as good and dark as bad. I just feel it's
a natural part of who we are. And because of
that biblical you know, narrative that we've been taught those
darker sites. We as women, I feel we've been conditioned
and taught to repress them. It's not necessarily that being
a woman is an absolutely dark experience. It's that it
is also dark and that is good. I mean we
(10:45):
as women, our right of passage is bleeding and that
is a very violent experience, especially the first time, and
for some women it is violent every month. You know,
if you have endometriosis and you have you know, other conditions,
and you're just like taught to shut it out, deal
with it, not bother anyone, go to work and don't complain.
(11:08):
And I think it's absurd.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, I mean my feeling is that darkness is crucial
and is just as valuable because without darkness, we don't
know that there's light. Yeah, we must have pole opposites
in order to recognize light as well, exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And I mean the universe came from darkness, that's right.
You know, existence and life came from darkness. At some
point in time, there was nothing but darkness. And from
darknesses where things come and start to sprout even light itself. Yeah,
so yeah, I think it's it's an interesting way to
see femininity and just rewrite it and normalize that we
(11:50):
as women are allowed to, you know, like war, like
that darker side is associated to men, like war and
violence and strength.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And which we have to if you look back, exactly
historically there were female leaders of armies that were women
who were warriors. That is an aspect of womanhood that
is often written out of history.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, exactly. So it's just understanding that just because that's
what's been written for the past, I don't know, two millenniums,
that doesn't mean that our nature, you know, our human nature,
anatomical nature, isn't still writing these codes, isn't still holding
you know, and storing this darkness. And I feel it's
(12:38):
so much more, it's so much healthier to just acknowledge
it and normalize it and make it a part of
our narrative, even from girlhood.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Absolutely, because suppression makes people feel that there's something wrong
with them exactly, and exactly there's not. You know, women's
anger is a subject that I have spent a lot
of time thinking about just because of the cultural norms
around women expressing rage and how it is so socially
(13:09):
unacceptable for a woman to be angry, and yet of
course we have that emotion. It's there for a reason
to also guide us away from and towards a better place.
And I think that it's even though we're in twenty
twenty three, some of the more darker emotions are still
considered to be unappealing for women, and we're taught from
(13:32):
a young age to not show that.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah, I absolutely agree, and it's exactly what you're saying.
We are taught that there's something wrong with us, you know,
like I must have an anger problem or you know,
even sexually, our sexual awakening is very lonely because it's
brought on to shame. You know. I feel like I
grew up with many boyfriends, you know, like surrounded by men,
(13:58):
and they would constantly talk about their bodies, their hairs, growing,
their penuses, having erections like oh I don't have semen
coming out of me?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Oh you don't. I do.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Like it was very uh accepted and collective, and it's like, yeah,
like boys are supposed to, you know, masturbate twenty four
to seven, then they're supposed to be thinking about sex,
and that's in their nature, And I was masturbating all
day long, and I was thinking about sex all day long,
not even the act of penetration, because that's where I
feel is one of.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
The main problems.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It's people associate sex to the sexual act, and it's
so much more complex than that. When you're nine years old,
you're not thinking no about the act of penetration itself,
but you are thinking about sex. You're thinking about your body,
your feelings, You're thinking about so many things that are
going on. And we don't have that same you know, space.
(14:53):
We don't have language.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
We don't have it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Think how many words there are to describe men and
boys debating. Yeah, there's so many words, And when you
think about what there is for women, there is a
couple of really bad descriptions.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
There isn't a language around female pleasure exactly. And you're right,
that is that is a conversation that does need to
be normalized, because otherwise those feelings get pushed underground again exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And a female female pleasure doesn't start when it's acceptable
for women to have.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Sex, starts way earlier.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Exactly, just as it is for boys. I mean boys
like a cousin of mine. She has a son and
he's I don't know, like seven, and he loves what's
what he feels down there, you know. And that's that's
the thing. It's not because he wants to have sex.
He just is becoming aware of these feelings. And it
starts with us as well. But we are taught that
it's only normal for us to feel sexuality rather than
(15:54):
sexual desire, which I feel are two different things.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yes, how do you differentiate those two things?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I feel sexual desire has to do with others and
sexuality has to do with yourself.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Hmm. And you have to know yourself. You have to
understand and have a relationship with your sexuality with yourself
before you can really be with somebody else exactly. Otherwise
you have no dialogue and you have no experience and
no knowledge of your own body and what you like
(16:28):
and what feels good and what you don't like and
what doesn't feel good.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
And I feel that's why for so many young women
and men as well, their first sexual experience is terrible.
I feel it's more the people I know whose first
sexual experience isn't a good one because you know, they
didn't have the tools to understand what they needed to
get from that, And because they're associating their sexuality with
(16:55):
sexual desire, and it's probably making things, you know, forced.
So I just definitely feel, you know, like that darkness,
that anatomy, that femininity and as well masculinity.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
But because we have masculinity.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Sure, it's an aspect of being female.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, it's just such for me.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's just such a pivotal and important part of my
identity and our identity. And I do feel that that
can condition your whole life. That can definitely take a
toll on you and condition who you are as a person,
as a professional, you know, dealing with negative emotions, as
a sexual being, it's just going to be in every
(17:37):
aspect of your life.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, it definitely prohibits you from a full expression and
a full embodiment of all aspects of yourself. Yeah. And
as a woman who has opinions and who has spoken
about these narratives for many, many years, as I'm sure
you've experienced, not everybody is welcoming of these conversations. There
(18:02):
is a patriarchal system that is set up to keep
women in a more friendly zone.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Less empowered and so I think the trick for me
at least has been to find professionally people that I
can collaborate with who also speak this language and who
are looking to show a fuller expression of what it
means to be feminine and what it means to be
someone who identifies as being a woman today. And I'm
(18:32):
curious what ideas you're hoping to explore through your film
with VS.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, I definitely wanted to reinterpret two terms that I
feel are very stereotype, which are femininity and being you know,
a Latina woman. So that was my starting point. And
you know, for me, it's no coincidence that it's the
Bogota House. So what I wanted to do was to
(19:00):
rite a correlation between what it is to inhabit a
city as Bogota and a body identifying as a woman
and navigating the two because I did find that there
are just many different ways in which they're the same
thing and in which they are not. But Bogota is
just this beautiful and brutal and vast and chaotic place,
(19:25):
and I would use all of those words to describe
our bodies as well.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I love those connections you've made.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, Yeah, and that was my starting point. I feel
like that was the pitch that they were like, okay, sold,
we like it. And definitely, you know, there is this
idea of navigating a woman body that's like very conditioned
and very oh it's this and that and that's just
about it. And it's the same with being you know,
a Latina and a Colombian. There's so much more going on,
(19:56):
and I feel like there are so many layers and
vibrations and connecttions and just so many cables, you know,
going through different places that I thought were interesting to rewrite,
you know, like for me, the best example is the
Mexico and Latin America filter in movies, where it's like
if anyone's like in a net Latin American place, it's
(20:18):
just like a very yellow and warm and like arid
filter and everything's.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Like super hystereotype. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And I was like, Okay, well, if I'm going to
have the chance to show what it is to be
a Colombian woman and what it is to navigate femininity
in a place like Bogota, I want to start by
showing that, you know, this is completely different. We're a
gray city, we're a green city, and it's just like
a collision between concrete and vegetation, which I feel is
(20:48):
very similar to experiencing, you know, in the bodies, you know,
the rational and the intelligence and the thought processing versus
the wilder, more visceral and.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Just and the emotions.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Yeah, and the emotion exactly. And there is a strong
collision in Bohota, as you will see. You have these huge,
absolutely immense and vast mountains that's around the city, and
you have these buildings who are absolutely you know, man
made skyscrapers, whatever you want, but compared to the immensity
(21:22):
of that mountain, they're just you know, like a little
a little part of something so much bigger.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
I can't wait to see it. What impact do you
hope to have with this film?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
In my case?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You know, I was asked to make these specific portraits
about these amazing women, women that I was so honored
and humbled to work with. And I guess I just
wanted to normalize and show that our experiences don't have
to be you know, like spectacular and glamorous and like
absolutely breathtaking for us to be special. So I try to,
(22:01):
you know, just show very ordinary settings, very ordinary scenes
of ourselves, our lives, and who we are when we
are by ourselves, because I feel that people.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Are the most interesting when they're alone.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
The things that they do.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, that's when you really are yourself. Every time you
stop being alone, you have a mask, and it's normal.
It's part of you know, our psychology, it's part of
the construction of the ego. But when you are by
yourself is when you are you at your rost and
you're purist. And I just had to find the trust
(22:39):
and to find these scenes with all of the subjects.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I just wanted it to be very real and very raw.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And how did you work with your subjects to find
what that moment was where they felt the most authentic.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I feel just like directing. If you're directing you know
an actor or an actress or writing a character, it's
just a and being patient and finding it. It took
many months of conversation and gaining their trust. Like I
didn't want them to do anything that they like. I
never wrote a scene.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Hmm.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I thought it was very bold of me to, you know,
I've been thinking how about this. What I did was
listen to them and from what they would tell me,
I would find the scenes and I would.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Ask them like it was organic.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, like do you feel comfortable showing this?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
And what were some of the questions that you ask
people when you asked them to fill out question as?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
They were very theme So it was like many questions,
you know, like when did you become aware of your body?
I did ask them the question of like do you
feel navigating your body is the same as navigating bobata?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
That was one of the main questions.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I also like to talk a lot about, you know, loneliness,
like do you feel lonely or do you feel alone? Like?
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Those are two very different things.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
They really are, aren't they?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And uh like do you feel femininity is a lonely experience?
Just like very There were like thirty questions and they
were all regarding the body, the city, loneliness, alienation. It
was just very interesting to see how everyone responded in
such different ways, which just shows you how complex it
(24:24):
is to exist.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
I guess I sometimes I.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Feel I sound very emo, but I think it's from
like it is complicated to exist. Human existence is It's
very complicated. Yeah, it really is. We need to be
honest about that. So did you film them and do
still portraits or was it just moving image. It was
just moving image, but yeah, they were like moving portraits.
(24:48):
But then we did something that was very interesting because
the two aspects were the portraits, and then they're like,
you need to do a collective portrait. And for me,
immediately the image of the collective portrait was the five
of us sitting at a table sharing food, you know,
breaking bread. And I also feel like in many cultures
(25:09):
this is like the table is the place, you know,
where where you share, but especially in Latin American culture,
breaking bread and sitting at the table, there is like
we are very warm people and there is something very
familiar about sitting at a table with someone. And from
there it evolved to something even more beautiful. And it's
(25:32):
that Lorena, she became a very close friend and this process,
she is the painter. She ended up then doing this
beautiful painting of five women sitting at a table.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
And the two of us collaborated into making a living
portrait of her painting. So we just like I wanted
to recreate it exactly the same. There were like even
some props and aspects that we used in both and
it was just like this very silent, very moody shot
of the five of us in exactly the same positions
(26:06):
on the table, looking at the camera, just as Lorena's
subjects are looking at the viewer.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Oh my gosh, I want to see this. I want
to see all of this work.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
It was very beautiful. And from there the table just
became something that I've also liked to explore, and it
is that we as women and as people. I mean,
I feel everyone has this individual experience of isolation, of navigation,
of you know, going through life, even in cities. And
(26:37):
when you converge and understand that this is a collective experience,
and that loneliness is a collective experience, and feeling confused
is a collective experience, and insecurity is a collective experience.
I feel there's something really special about that, especially when
you open up yourself to other women who you don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, your destigmatizing very normal emotions and experiences which are
really it's really important.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Yeah, and just seeing your if you carry your whole
life secrets and insecurities and just so much you know,
darkness within you and you see them reflected on other people.
I feel that's just it's almost like an orgasmic experience.
It's such a sense of bodily relief to see that
(27:28):
you know what you were saying. Suppression makes you feel
there's something wrong with you. And the moment you don't
suppress and you see that it's normal, it just becomes
an amazing experience. And that table became like a four hour,
five hour conversation between the five of us, just understanding
that yes, we are alone, but no, we are not alone.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Well, the opposite of suppression is connection for me.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Exactly, Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
What was something that surprise to you about being a
part of this process with VS?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
For one, I was very surprised that we managed to
pull it off, because I was absolutely I was very
frightened with how I was going to be able to
do it. And then the other thing that really surprised
me was the interview process. I had never done interviews
like that. I had to interview all of the other
women and they were like five hour interviews. So we
(28:27):
had the five hour table conversation and then each day
would be like five hours speaking to the rest. And
I am an extremely sensitive and empathetic person, so at
the end of each interview, I would be crying and
I would be like very emotionally, you know, drained and
(28:48):
it was pretty incredible. We were all like, so, who's
the biggest influence in your life? And like, even before answering,
we would just like start crying and reminiscing and speaking
about our grandparents and that was something we all had
in common, and I thought that was pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
So why do you think that it's important for the VS.
Fashion Show to be reimagined as it is being as
opposed to it disappearing and never coming back.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I think that's a good question.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
I feel disappearing and never coming back is just the
easy way out because it does not require redemption and listen,
I was a part of me was very skeptical about
this whole process, and I think most of the women
cast were just because you know, what the VS. Fashion
(29:39):
Show used to represent and especially how I feel it
used to mate us all feel, which was like, Okay,
we are absolute mortals and this is something that will
never be a part of the conversation. And in the end,
I decided to just take a leap.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And for me, I'm very curious. I have no idea
what's going to come out.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Because it's like it's twenty artists, plus you know, the
incredible creative directors. We had, you know, Lola, who in
my case was who guided me creatively and gave me
all of the indications for the movie, for the documentary.
You only know what you did, yes, and other than that,
it's just like this. I don't know if it's called
(30:24):
like that in English, that exquisite corpse. That's how it's called.
In Spanish, it is excusito, which is just like this
amazing Frankenstein of just like a lot of patches of
different people and they become this huge thing.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Become a new body with everybody's mock and everyone's piece
is put together exactly.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
It's a Frankenstein and it's the same as the Darkness thing.
I don't see that as a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I don't either. It's actually highly collaborative and it's showing
unity and shared perspectives and allowing for different perspectives. Yeah,
I am so excited to see not only your work,
but all of the women's work who have been a
part of reimagining this epic show and opportunity, and I
(31:14):
just can't wait to see it, and even more so
after speaking to you, I'm so curious and I just
want to thank you for your time and for your insight,
and I look forward to the day where I can
actually see this come to life. You have been listening
to VS Voices, the official companion podcast to the VS
World Tour. My thanks to today's guest, and if you
(31:37):
love our show, please comment, like, and follow us wherever
you listen to your favorite podcasts, and as always, you
can join me a Man to Decademy on Instagram. VS
Voices is part of Victoria's Secrets, ongoing commitment to creating
positive change for women. Together, we are amplifying the voices
and perspectives of women from all backgrounds. Please remember that
(32:01):
sharing stories brings us closer together. Thank you for listening.
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