The Journey of Monalisa
(The Journey of Monalisa)
Nicole Costa | Documentary
2019 | 93 minutes | Chile, United States
Chilean-born performer and writer Iván Monalisa fully embraces his / her dual selves: scrappy, masculine Iván as well as diva, transvestite sex-worker Monalisa.
Synopsis
Chilean-born performer and writer Iván Monalisa fully embraces his / her dual selves: scrappy, masculine Iván as well as diva, transvestite sex-worker Monalisa. A reunion with filmmaker Nicole Costa, Iván’s former college classmate, provides the opportunity for a journey through this undocumented transgender immigrant’s daily life of sex, drugs, and poetry—as well as a quest for US legalization. Pragmatic and humorous, Iván Monalisa navigates the gritty underbelly of New York City with charisma and charm.
Nicole Costa intersperses recent scenes of Monalisa’s attempts to get a visa and their first successes as a writer with old VHS footage, snippets of telephone conversations, and extracts from their work: beautiful, raw pieces about life and survival in New York.
Reviews
"Iván Monalisa has the talent to endow his characters with vitality and grace, he tells you about their misery as something inevitable, with humor and without turning them into victims. They are stories about survival in the face of Trump's migration policies, with characters who skirt all urban dangers with humor and a lot of solidarity amongst them. They share drugs, pimps, beauty awards, syndromes and delirium, but they are a very close-knit community." — Pedro Almodovar, About Monalisa’s latest book Las Biuty Queens
"Both intimate and gloriously poetic." — New York Women in Film and Television
"The Journey of Monalisa, like its protagonist, transforms scene by scene, experiments with a variety of supports and techniques, escapes the genre's own bonds. It is the continuity of Monalisa's same gesture of freedom. It is a collective struggle: the right to transform, to exercise an identity free from bonds in both life and cinema and poetry." — Caligari, Revista de Cine
"Offers another side of the Chilean trans experience. [...] Monalisa's story will be quite foreign to the average filmgoer, and it's one that urgently deserves to be heard." — Jude Dry, IndieWire
"It effectively describes the inequalities hidden in the New York social structure and the identity discourse of minorities and their survival in the face of brutal violence in the cradle of savage capitalism." — Rodrigo Miranda, El Desconcierto
"Here, subject and artist, and a subject who is an artist, jointly trace a path free of concealment that arouses curiosity, like the infinite braid that Ivan drags through the everyday landscapes of New York life." — Alex Vázquez, La Pistola de Chéjov
"It's a one-of-a-kind film that mixes Monalisa's life and words with movie magic to create an absolute special cinema experience." — Unseen Films
Citation
Main credits
Costa, Nicole (film director)
Costa, Nicole (screenwriter)
Camino, Daniela (film producer)
Camino, Daniela (screenwriter)
Miranda, Melisa (screenwriter)
Ojeda, Iván Monalisa (on-screen participant)
Other credits
Cinematographer, Nicole Costa [and 7 others]; editor, Melisa Miranda; music, Kato Hideki.
Citation
Cataloging
Pragda subjects
Activism
Biography
Culture + Identity
Dance + Performing Arts
Gender + Sexuality Studies
Latinx
Literature
Migration Studies
North America
Sociology
Keywords
Clips
Festivals
Bilbao Festival Zinegoak - Best Documentary Award
FEMCINE
Women Film Festival - Special Jury Prize
RED Encounter of Chile's Film Festivals - Márgenes Award
DocsValparaíso - National Film Award, Best Feature Film
Cinema Tropical Awards - Best U.S. Latinx
LesGaiCineMad - Best Documentary Film
DIRECTOR: Nicole Costa
NATIONALITY: Chile, United States
YEAR: 2019
GENRE: Documentary
LANGUAGE: Spanish
COLOR / B&W: Color
GRADE LEVEL: College, Adults
SUBTITLE/CC: AVAILABLE
AUDIO DESCRIPTION: NOT AVAILABLE
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