Frida Kahlo

This award-winning documentary (Montreal International Festival of Films - Best Biography of an Artist) provides a stirring look at the life and times of Mexico's most famous woman painter, Frida Kahlo. Although the film is old, with simple editing techniques, it eloquently portrays the artist's life in the famous "Blue House" outside of Mexico City that she shared with her husband, the famous muralist and painter Diego Rivera. A near fatal bus accident, years of traumatic surgery, and endless heartache left Frida Kahlo devastated, relentlessly transferring her physical and emotional pain to the canvas. Readings from her diaries, archival photographs, and film footage offer an intimate portrait of one of the most astonishing figures of the twentieth century. Narrated by Sada Thompson and commentary written by Hayden Herrera, this documentary explores Kahlo as the center of the Mexican renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. Not just as an artist, but as a tragic figure as it follows her painting career, her growing interest in politics and her turbulent relationship with her husband, Diego.