We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michelle Trujillo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michelle, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I have always been drawn to creating things since I was a child. Since childhood I have engaged in different types of making as a way of understanding myself and the world around me. When I was a teenager, I landed on filmmaking as the outlet that I wanted to invest more of my time in. I learned the technical skills I needed for filmmaking in college. I feel that my most formative creative moments were in grad school. This was a time where I learned to take my art-making and voice seriously and allow myself to show vulnerability in what I created. Letting myself be more vulnerable and 16mm analog film skills were the most precious things that I learned in that space. Being the first person in my family to go to graduate school, I walked in with no sense of what to expect, how things worked and a big case of imposter syndrome. I was very lucky to have some amazing mentors there who guided me through this learning curve until I reached the point where I knew that I deserved to be there just as much as anyone else.

Michelle, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The focus of my practice is to question and explore representations of Latine culture, gender and identity creation. My work stems from an intersectional feminist perspective but does not always offer solutions to the problems it engages with. Instead, I am concerned with upsetting power structures and notions of normality through disorientation. I work in Spanish, English and Spanglish as a mirroring of my lived experience. I also work in various mediums such as eco and hand-processed 16mm film, digital video, 35mm still film and cyanotypes. Lately I have been learning how to make paper and have been spending a lot of time researching about sustainable ways to bring analog filmmaking into the future.

I am interested in contributing to a diverse representation of the Latin-American experience. Through my films, I work to understand myself and the world around me. My hope is that others will feel seen and represented through my work as well.

Some of my textual influences are Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands, Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology and Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. Filmmakers that I have found inspirational in my journey are Kidlat Tahimik, Bill Brown, Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez and Maya Deren.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I first started working in film in Miami, I had various negative experiences in which I saw people who I considered to be “successful”, treating others and myself badly. At the time, these experiences left me with the conclusion that in order to be a successful woman in the film industry, you had to step on the backs of others. I hated this idea and did not want to become someone who would put others down in order to get ahead. I left those positions and decided not to work in film. I was working at a donut shop for a while but I still had the desire and need to create within me. I decided to try film again and go to grad school and it was the best decision I could have ever made. This experience gave me confidence in what I was creating and introduced me to many successful artists who move through the world in loving and uplifting ways.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

A book that really impacted my creative journey and outlook is Borderlands: La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua. This book championed and demonstrated through its form, fluidity as a way to move through the world and surpass obstacles. It is written by a queer chicana working in academia and it made me feel seen in a profound way. She suggests that mental fluidity is necessary for those living within cultural borderlands in order to grab onto that which is life-giving and let go of that which is harmful. This approach of fluidity remains with me in every film that I have made since I read this book.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.michellemtrujillo.com/
• Instagram: @pionerafilmvideo
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-trujillo-5a76144a
• Other: https://vimeo.com/michelletrujillo