- Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
It's always fascinating when a documentary filmmaker
is the subject of their own film.
Being your own lead actor
can make for a more intimate connection with viewers
but at the cost of
digging deep into your past and confronting painful memories,
thereby making yourself an open book.
This is the case for the director of tonight's film
Silent Beauty.
Director Jasmin Mara Lopez
saw a photo of her niece with her grandfather
and was immediately flooded with traumatic memories
of her own abuse at the hands of the same man,
who was also a Baptist minister.
Lopez stayed silent and kept her secret for 24 years,
but once she saw the photo of her niece,
she knew there was no denying what she had to do.
Rather than just revealing a secret to a therapist,
she made a film to tell her story
and in doing so find peace in the healing process.
As is often the case with sexual abuse,
it was after Lopez came forward that she discovered
other victims within her family had experienced abuse.
Lopez has also been contacted
by many other victims from all over the country
who were moved by the story and want to tell their stories.
In addition to being an up and coming filmmaker,
Lopez is a journalist based in New Orleans.
She has a strong passion for immigrant rights,
youth empowerment, and social change.
Silent Beauty is her feature film directorial debut
and what she came away with on the other side of her grief
was a marvelously cinematic documentary.
The director offsets deep painful memories
recanted by herself, as well as her other subjects
by finding a balance,
using mesmerizing footage
and a score which helped create a calming effect
that helped her keep a tonal balance
despite such heavy subject matter.
It is the director's use of archival family footage
that creates moments of vérité
and an intimacy so important
in a character-based documentary like Silent Beauty.
Lopez says that from the start,
her goal behind the film was to highlight the beauty
that so clearly existed within her family,
but that was overshadowed
by the trauma of child sexual abuse.
The film took seven years to complete
and has won a host of awards.
Not a bad maiden voyage for a first time filmmaker.
Silent Beauty starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.