'Frida' director-editor Carla Gutiérrez reveals how mentorship is incredibly crucial for her in the industry during an "Achieving Gender Equity in Storytelling" conversation presented by STARZ #TakeTheLead and moderated by THR contributing editor Stacey Wilson Hunt.
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00:00You know, I heard a lot as an editor because you're really getting hired for your opinions.
00:08As an editor, you're writing the film.
00:11That's what documentary editors do.
00:14And I just kept hearing people describe me as opinionated instead of like confident,
00:20you know, and this is why you're hiring me, like for my opinions to write this film.
00:26And I wish I had, you know, brought that up.
00:29Like, are you describing men editors the same way that you're describing me?
00:35And then...
00:36And that affects your ability to get hired for the next job.
00:38Yeah.
00:39If someone's saying, oh, she's too opinionated.
00:41Yeah.
00:42And that's casting a pall over every hiring opportunity after that.
00:45And, you know, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I love to work with other women.
00:50And bland women, you know, I love to like just put it all out on the table and just
00:55be really free to get into the discussions, like in a trusting way.
01:01I will say one thing that I feel like I faced early on in my career was not being able...
01:09There were wonderful women that mentor me.
01:12And mentorship, especially when you're learning a craft like editing and directing documentaries,
01:18mentorship for me was incredibly important.
01:22It made me feel really confident about like knowing the story that I wanted to tell and
01:27like feeling really confident about my craft.
01:31But I had a really hard time finding women of color to mentor me.
01:36And so that's something that I am working on now to become the mentor of especially
01:42other Latinas coming up.
01:46And that's key for me because there is, you know, an issue of access.
01:50There's so few women of color that like get to, you know, the level of experience that
01:56just a few of us do.
02:00But there's also the question of excellence.
02:03We need to work on those two things at the same time is, you know, getting access to
02:07this woman, but also lifting up the potential for excellence.
02:13And to me, mentorship is, you know, able to do that.
02:17So that's something that is incredibly crucial for me.