We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Pedro Lavin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Pedro below.

Hi Pedro, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I recently finished an important project which I had been working on for years. It’s a short film called ‘La Pequeña Muerte’ or ‘The Little Death’ in English. The film tell the story of two lovers who share an afternoon of passion, as an ancient deity from their dreams performs an orgiastic dance that mirrors their ecstasy.

The spirit visito leads the couple on an oneiric journey of transformation and rapture. Heralded by strange, symbolic visions the trio come to an ecstatic climax; as the walls between reality and fantasy collapse. Like orgasm itself, the spirit’s ritual ends where it began in an infinite cycle of love, life and death.

The film also represents a homecoming for me. It’s a reclamation of my history, and reconciliation of my two halves: a closeted past in Mexico City with a liberated, queer present. Each frame is loaded with symbolism that enriches the world of the film, and tells a story of queer self-acceptance. One of the film’s protagonists, a dancing god, becomes symbolic representation of queer desire and an amalgamation of traditional Mexican motifs: his pearlescent mask recalls the skull symbol ever present in the Mexican imagination, and subtly alludes to luchador masks; while his robes recall both traditional Catholic priest garb and Matador costuming. However, these ‘machista’ elements are subverted, reclaimed within an eroticized and queer context; reflecting my desire to re-contextualize my past and culture, and reclaim it.

Another instance of this recontextualization occurs during the climax of the film. A monarch butterfly escapes from the mouth of the god, simultaneously a symbolic representation of orgasm: life force escaping the body, and an allusion to traditional Mexican beliefs that monarch butterflies carry the souls of the departed. With these, and many other visual metaphors woven into the fabric of the film, the film tells a story of queerness and how that intersects with Mexican identity. It employs a rich symbolic vocabulary to construct construct a multi-layered narrative that is simultaneously a tender love story and a deep examination of queer identity, magical realism and Mexican mythology.

It has fortunately received a very warm response worldwide, and has been selected to participate at numerous film festivals internationally, most recently OUTFEST: the largest queer film festival in the world. It will finish its festival tour early to mid next year, at which point I hope to release it widely.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a filmmaker and visual artist, born and raised in Mexico City. My work explores mythologies and rituals; weaving magical realism and oneiric fantasy with my own lived experience to create stories. This pursuit is rooted in themes of erotism, gender and desire; the transformative power of nature; and the primal link between the sacred and the profane.

I have always considered myself an artist, and have been practicing some sort of art-making since I can remember. At a young age this was nurtured and encouraged by my parents and a family steeped in multi-generational artistic tradition. This environment provided ample support for my artistic pursuits, which led me to constantly self-initiate and search out art and creativity wherever I could during the first part of my life. My commercial career began after I graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and moved to New York. The artistic pursuits I chased after during this post-school period were almost exclusively client work, but they provided incredible opportunities for growth that built upon the foundation that CalArts had built. Although not always the most artistically inspired, the commercial work I produced during this time nonetheless gave me an extensive background in design and direction for VFX, filmmaking and animation; which then naturally evolved into my now multidisciplinary art and film practice.

An important shift in my career happened once I felt I had acquired the necessary knowledge to pursue my own passions: I realized that I had so much more to say. Unexplored underworlds lived within me, where my stories grew like wildflowers in hidden meadows, waiting to be harvested. So, I decided to continue my career as a commercial creative director only part time and devote my remaining time towards grander artistic pursuits and explorations of my own humanity/identity. My career had reached a new equilibrium.

I’m so grateful to have achieved what I have, and feel thankful to have experienced some degree of success and recognition in this new stage of my practice. Perhaps, however, the biggest accomplishment of my career so far has been painstakingly forging it into what I want. Realizing that I wasn’t fulfilled in my past life wasn’t easy, neither was walking down unexplored pathways to achieve a new balance, so being here now feels massive. While there’s always a ways to go, I am very fortunate to have made it this far and feel very proud of the fact that I created this for myself.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Filmmaking in itself is an act of resilience and perseverance.

From financing to shooting to post production, every step of the process presents new and unexpected obstacles that seem unsurpassable. Your creativity is pushed to its limits at every turn, and you must exercise it constantly to find the best and most desirable outcome for every problem that arises. At times, the process in itself feels like the biggest challenge, because the issues are constant and seemingly never ending. Maintaining a clear vision of what the final product should be in the midst of constant problem solving can feel almost impossible.

However finishing a project of such magnitude brings with it an unparalleled sense of accomplishment and self fulfillment. Creating a film like ‘La Pequeña Muerte’, although at times grueling, was a dream. The difficulties it presented pushed me to level-up constantly, and the process catalyzed my growth as a director. Artistically, the project also revealed many secrets: symbols that I had previously employed in my works suddenly gained urgent new meaning, like a cryptic language of subconscious emotion that slowly deciphers itself. It gave me a deeper understanding of myself as a queer person, and how that part of my identity relates to my cultural heritage. Finally, and crucially, it allowed me to recognize important mistakes that I made in production. Now, I can work to avoid them in future productions.

That’s the beauty of throwing yourself into a gargantuan project that can seem unachievable: while making it can occasionally feel like hell, the artist that emerges victorious from it will invariably be an exponentially better one.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Although my main engine for creation is a fierce desire for self expression, a part of me also wishes to be seen and understood; and for my work to form part of a larger context. Especially in my more queer centric works like ‘La Pequeña Muerte’, an important aspect of the pieces is to show facets of our identity that may not have been seen before, or perhaps are seen less often. I find it crucial to represent queerness in multidimensional and unseen ways. Growing up closeted, I was always most fascinated by strangeness or queerness in art and media, whether explicit or coded. It felt simultaneously searingly new and like something that I knew intrinsically, almost viscerally. It gave me a deeper understanding of myself and made me feel like there were others like me, something that I desperately hungered for.

As I traverse deeper into my career and my practice, I realize that I stand on the shoulders of my brothers and sisters: the artists who came before me. I hope that I can continue in their tradition and create art that provides that same knowing fascination to someone else. It is very special when someone has been moved by or spoken to by my work, even if it is a single person. It’s the closing of a cycle that begins with inception: the work has finally reached its audience and created emotion within them.

Besides the act of creation itself, that is the ultimate goal.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pedrolavin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wolf_venus/
• Other: Foundation: https://foundation.app/@wolf_venus