María Alvarez is an internationally recognised Cuban-Dutch filmmaker who was selected for the 2023 Rising Voices fellowship – a partnership between Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Productions, Indeed, and 271 Films. Through the program, she is entering the festival circuit with her next short, ‘Last Days Of The Lab,’ which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.
Last Days Of The Lab follows a mother and daughter who sift through old memories as they prepare to permanently close down their family’s photo lab.
Was there a particular event in your life that inspired you to write this story?
The script was written by myself and my creative partner, Ethan Newmyer. At the particular moment of writing “Last Days of the Lab,” we were really fixated on the idea of time and how we all deal with the passage of time. This manifested through a couple of things that were happening in our lives. During COVID, Ethan started digitizing VHS tapes and home videos. It first started with his own, then mine, and even some of our good friends. We recognized how easily you could slip into this nostalgic wormhole while doing this process and thought there was something really interesting to explore there. At the same time, my parents had moved across the country and shipped me all of my childhood keepsakes.
While cleaning out my storage unit, I began to look through everything for the first time. There were broken snow globes, handmade books from 1st grade, old photos I had never seen before, handwritten notes from my parents. It was like being sucked into this time wormhole and before I knew it, it had been hours of crying and laughing at all these memories I had forgotten about. When we left, we walked past another person down the hall doing the exact same thing. We were fascinated by this and thought we needed to channel this feeling into a story. There was something to both of these instances that tapped into the idea of memory having tangibility. With everything in our lives becoming more digital, that tangibility is becoming more rare. These moments were the backbone of inspiration for our story. The first image we had was of a mother and daughter in a family-run photo lab, these people who are the caretakers of the community’s memories made tangible.
Would you say that the film also taps into unresolved grief, as well as loss?
Definitely – this is a story about a mother and daughter who are grappling with moving on and letting go – of both Hugo, the patriarch of the family, and Hugo’s Camera, the photo lab that has been in their family for decades. Since Hugo’s death, Lucia and Isabel have been processing his passing very separately from one another, reacting to it in very different ways. While writing, we kept asking ourselves, why is this story happening right now? We came up with the idea of having our story take place on the last day that the photo lab is open to the public. Moving is an emotionally exhausting process, and closing down the shop would inevitably bring things to the surface that Lucia and Isabel have yet to confront. We were interested in exploring the deep interconnectedness between the grief for a loved one and a physical place.
The theme of family is strong in this story, did you base the film on your own family?
Yes and no. Ethan and I are really interested in the idea of auto-fiction, where real elements are interwoven alongside fictional ones. For example, the hand wave is taken from a real thing my family does when we say goodbye to each other. I also hid photos of my parents into the scene where Lucia is scanning negatives. In the real-life process of digitizing and preserving all of our home movies, we spoke a lot about how it felt like a process of emotional archaeology. It became a chance to know our parents better and to see them in a new light. Through that, we were also learning about ourselves. I think family will always be a constant throughline in all of my work because it is such a vital core of who I am.
How important was it for you as storytellers, to have a hopeful conclusion to the film?
This was very important to us and the only way the story could’ve concluded given the message we were trying to tell. Isabel is stuck in the past, Lucia is looking to the future, but ultimately they need to meet each other in the present moment and have compassion for each other to be able to move forward together as a family. They spend so much of the film in disagreement of what Hugo would want them to do, but by the end, they realize that the only thing he would’ve wanted is for them to heal together. Grief is just another form of love. It was important for us to balance the tone of the film with moments of levity, true connection, and laughter.
How important do you think it is, that organizations like indeed champion filmmakers?
It is crucial. Making a film is incredibly difficult and it requires a village to pull it off. Financial and artistic support from organizations like Indeed is key in allowing us to tell our stories. It creates a more equitable and sustainable mode of working. For example, no one was allowed to step foot on any of the Rising Voices sets without getting paid. This was the first time that Ethan and I were able to pay our entire crew on a narrative project, rather than asking friends for favors. It was also the first time that we have ever been paid as writers, and that simple validation is so important for artists.
The entire process allowed us to dream bigger. Every aspect of the storytelling, from the production design to the score to the cinematography, was all elevated by the privilege of having a budget. It allowed us to focus on the creative, rather than putting energy into raising funds. Money is such a barrier to entry for so many filmmakers, and getting to see the films of the 10 directors in Rising Voices was such a joy and a gift. It enriches all of us when people with such different visions, perspectives, and lived experiences are allowed to tell their own stories. Now in the third year of Rising Voices, Indeed has invested in and supported the careers of 30 directors in the pursuit of their dreams, and that has been such a beautiful gift to be a part of.
What was your experience like working with Indeed?
The experience working with Indeed was and continues to be amazing. We have been supported from day one of the program, and the partnership has continued on past the completion of our films. Indeed has organized screenings at film festivals like Tribeca and TIFF, as well as theatrical runs this summer in front of films like Barbie, Joy Ride, and Blue Beetle. It feels incredible to have completed the program with a new piece of work that I feel deeply proud of. Rising Voices has also expanded my community of friends and collaborators in such beautiful and unexpected ways. I was so excited to get into the program and to get the opportunity to make a new film, but I had no idea that I would also be meeting some of my closest friends along the way. I’m incredibly honored to have made our film alongside such world-class filmmakers, and I’m excited to see what the future holds for us all.
How did you get into filmmaking?
I have been making films since I was little. My dad taught himself photography, and I grew up on the sets of his photo shoots. The idea of art and photography as a normal thing allowed me to imagine being an artist at a young age. The world of cameras never felt foreign to me, but I gravitated towards filmmaking because I loved storytelling. I always had a camera in hand and would edit together videos from all of my friends’ birthday parties. Once I got to high school, I learned about film school and began to take filmmaking much more seriously.
The idea that I could study film seemed mind boggling to me. I was very lucky to go to a high school that had a film class as well as an incredible teacher, Mr. Houchins, who really believed in me and my passions from day one. I started making short films and submitting them to student film festivals and competitions around the world. I’m a first-generation American and neither of my parents went to college, so I knew I had to build a resume for myself in order to get into a top film school. This path got me into USC and I’ve been living here in Los Angeles making movies ever since.
Ethan and I met in 2017 at USC’s film school, and we have been making things together ever since. We bonded over our shared interest in coming of age stories that deal with questions of time, memory, identity, and connection. We’ve been working on each other’s sets for the past 6 years across commercials and music videos, but our hearts have always been in the narrative space. “Last Days of the Lab” was our return to our narrative roots, and the first time that we have worked together as co-writers, which we now plan on doing for all future projects.
What is next for you?
“Last Days of the Lab” continues to find new audiences in the festival circuit, most recently screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.
I am currently in the 2023 Sundance Institute Latine Collab Scholarship program where I am developing my feature film script, “Guava Tree.” Ethan and I are both in writing mode as we work on our collective feature scripts. We are also writing and preparing a proof-of-concept short film that we plan to shoot within the next year for our feature script, entitled “Loma.”
Last Days of the Lab on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lastdaysofthelab/
María Alvarez on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shotbymaria/
María Alvarez’s website: http://www.mvafilms.com/