With a good dose of heart and fantasy, the Sundance documentary Finding Mavis Beacon follows two young black women who are dedicated to finding the original model for Mavis Beacon teaches writing. If you touched a computer during the '80s or '90s, there's a good chance that Mavis helped you get comfortable with a keyboard. Or at least, you might remember her from the show's original cover from 1987: a smiling, elegant black woman dressed in a cream-colored suit. She embodied professional style and poise; It was like you could be as capable as her if you bought that program.
It's no spoiler to say that. "Mavis Beacon" It didn't really exist: it was a marketing idea put together by a bunch of white guys in Silicon Valley. But the show's cover star was real: Her name was Renee L'Esperance, a Haitian model who was discovered while working at Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles. After the image of her helped make Mavis Beacon teaches writing Following a success, he retired from the spotlight and reportedly returned to retire in the Caribbean.
The documentary's director and writer, Jazmin Jones, as well as her collaborator, Olivia McKayla Ross, start with those basic details and set out to find L'Esperance like a pair of digital detectives. From their base of operations in a ramshackle Bay Area office, surrounded by technological objects, a variety of artworks and images of influential black women, they establish the timeline reported by L'Esperance, follow leads and even organize a spiritual ceremony to try to connect with the model.
I won't say if the couple actually ends up finding L'Esperance because it's the journey that does Finding Mavis Beacon It's a pleasure to see you. Jones and Ross grew up with the typing program and felt an affinity for the character of Mavis Beacon. It was the first show to prominently feature a black woman on the cover (a move that reportedly caused some vendors to reduce their orders), making the tech world seem like a place where young women black could really fit. Beacon's digital hands also appear. on the screen, as if she were gently guiding her fingers to the correct letters and position.
To help uncover more details about the whereabouts of Mavis Beacon, Jones and Ross created . Some of those calls appear in the film and make it clear that their digital presence inspired many people. The film begins with references to Beacon throughout the culture, including one of my favorite bits from Abbott Elementary, where Quinta Brunson's excellent teacher is too excited to spot the typing icon in the school crowd. I remembered my own childhood experience with Mavis Beacon teaches writing, spending free time at school and free time at home trying to speed up my writing. In high school, writing seemed as natural to me as breathing. And yes, I would have been scared too if I had seen the real Beacon in person.
While the documentary doesn't seem out of place at Sundance, known for its innovative projects, it also sometimes feels like a piece of experimental media destined for YouTube or an art show full of incredibly cool twenty-somethings. (At one point, Ross attends a farewell ceremony for one of her friends' dead laptops, which was held in an art space full of people dressed in white. That's the kind of modern weirdness that will take you away from this movie, or make you want more.)
Jones shows us screen recordings of his own desktop, where he may be watching a TikTok along with his notes. Instead of a full-screen video chat with another person, we sometimes simply see a FaceTime window (and occasionally it mirrors Jones' own image staring at the screen). Finding Mavis Beacon tells its story in a way that digital natives will find natural, without locking themselves exclusively into screens like .
As with many debut features, the film could use some narrative fine-tuning. Jones and Ross's investigation stalls at several points and we are often left adrift as they ponder their next steps. At times, the pair also seems too close to the story, or at least that's what it seems when we see Jones crying as he begs to be reunited with L'Esperance.
But I'd say that's also part of the charm of Finding Mavis Beacon. Jones and Ross are not true crime podcast hosts looking to create content out of controversy. They are young women who found comfort in one of the few faces in technology that looked like them. With this film, Jones and Ross could be equally inspiring to a new generation of underrepresented technicians.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/seeking-mavis-beacon-review-sundance-documentary-140049830.html?src=rss
