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“We can not allow them to take the word away from us”: Paz Alicia Garciadiego Addresses Young People at the 22nd FICM

Gustavo R. Gallardo

Screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego gave a talk entitled The Author in the Times of Streaming. The Adventures and Tricks of Screenwriters in Current Times, as part of the tribute paid to her by the screenwriters' association TINTA at the 22nd Morelia International Film Festival (FICM). Before the conversation moderated by Marina Stavenhagen, Carlos Cuarón, a member of TINTA, gave the screenwriter the title of Honorary Member for her contribution to Mexican cinema.

Paz Alicia Garciadiego is one of the most prominent figures in the world of screenwriting in Mexico and abroad. With fifteen feature films in her career, seven national and international awards, including a Golden Lion for Best Screenplay for Profundo carmesí (1996, dir. Arturo Ripstein) at the Venice Film Festival in 1996; an Award for Best Unpublished Screenplay for El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1999, dir. Arturo Ripstein) at the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana, Cuba in 1998; and the Salvador Toscano Medal for Cinematographic Merit in 2014, to name a few.

During 90 minutes, the screenwriter talked about her beginnings in screenwriting, in fact, she revealed that as a child she did not watch Mexican films because she was a “mamona” (pretentious). Instead, she watched “gringo movies” because her grandmother took her to those screenings.

“From her, I learned to disdain the falsity of bucolic Mexican films of the 1950s (...) My grandmother liked certain things and she was right,” she said, adding that she dreamed of being a ‘serious writer’ and not a screenwriter.

During the talk, she discussed the construction of her characters, which she refers to as complex, multifaceted, characters that have things happen to them, “that fail.” She went on to explain how she describes them: their clothes, smells, where they live, to create the atmosphere and make them speak for themselves. “I like their contradiction, that they face destiny and -my deviation, worthy of psychoanalysts- that they fail, I love sad endings! Tragic ones! I've had a few happy endings but they are so paradoxical that they are only happy between many quotation marks,” she says.

When it was time to talk about censorship and political correctness, Paz Alicia Garciadiego said that we cannot allow them to tell us what to do, what is good or bad with the hypocrisy of “good causes.”

“We have to be very mindful of the fact that beyond the concrete causes we may be for or against, we cannot let them take the word away from us, we cannot allow another inquisition court to emerge to judge and say what is good or what is not good.”

And she added: “To all those who want to make or watch films, we cannot allow puritanical censorship to take over our lives again in the most hypocritical way by finding good causes, good reasons, because they are a bit like whitened sepulchers.”

When talking about modern feminism, the screenwriter says that it only “gives for very flat characters,” because it can demerit the work if what it seeks is to tell people something is wrong. “Films with a message are called propaganda, they are usually very bad,” she stresses to a silent room.

“Empowered women who have all the answers, I don't like them as characters: they have no doubts, no contradictions, they know what they want and they achieve it. I would prefer, in a narrative, a woman who wants to achieve this or that and fails or gets stuck with it,” she explains, reiterating that she looks for characters with contrasts.

Garciadiego sees herself as part of a dying breed, of screenwriters who understand their role and defend it; of the so-called old school. “We are indispensable”, she says, acknowledging that these days authorship in cinema has been left in the hands of producers, and even of people who have nothing to do with the seventh art.

The screenwriter says that today there are directors who apologize for making series because they have to pay for their kids' schools and other expenses. “The authorship in cinema has been diluted and has gone to the producers (...) Some producers believe the film is theirs and sometimes it is not even their money...”

In fact, she says, films are no longer written by a screenwriter. Instead, they're written by an algorithm that dictates the streaming trends, "It is no longer made by producers, but by a man who studied Business Administration at Stanford and does not want to lose his job.”

Cinema has become an industry in which even the Xerox guy has an opinion. And if he says that the actress should be blonde, everyone listens to him, when before the screenwriter had a voice and a script that came from their heart. “It's a humiliating endeavor,” she laments and recommends defending authorship.

On the subject of artificial intelligence, the Mexican screenwriter says without hesitation: “It is our enemy. It is going to destroy authorship and humanity, and there will be no way to control it. I'm scared of the world and you have the chance to change it,” she tells the young people in the audience before the conversation concludes.