As a filmmaker and a woman of color, Ana Lydia Monaco wants to make people proud to see themselves on screen.
She seeks to create honest female characters whose stories resonate with Latinas and broader female audiences.
Monaco’s latest short film, Meeting Brown, will have its Los Angeles premiere at the Panamanian Film Festival on Oct. 27. In the film, a young Latina named Alex (played by Los Angeles-based actress Diana Gonzalez-Morett) begins to have doubts about the cultural differences between herself and her white fiance.
“It’s not my story, but I could relate to it,” Monaco said.
Monaco’s husband is white, and she said no one in his family had ever dated a non-white person. As she met more women of color who were dating white men, she realized that they all shared some similar experiences to the story she portrays in the film.
“I talked to a lot of women, I actually did a lot of research,” she said.
Monaco is a first-generation American. Growing up in the San Fernando Valley and Guadalajara, Mexico she was not encouraged to become an artist.
As a child, she wrote and directed plays and saved up her money to buy a camcorder. By the time she was a teen, she would stay up late into the night writing.
“My dad would knock on my door and tell me to quit writing because nobody was ever going to pay me for it,” she said.
Education was highly valued in her family, but everyone she knew had very traditional careers.
“I never really realized I could have a career in film or as a writer because nobody in my family was involved in the film industry,” she said. “Even though I lived in LA, I was not close to anything or anyone in the industry.”
After studying fashion and marketing and working for many years in public relations, Monaco started taking classes at Santa Monica College, in preparation for an MBA.
One of these classes was a media course, where she ended up producing and directing two documentaries. Her professors were impressed by her artistic potential and encouraged her to pursue film school, instead of business school.
And so, three years ago, Monaco decided to enroll in the Film Studies program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. She was in her thirties by then. In April, she graduated with a BFA. Meeting Brown was her final degree project.
The film was a labor of love for Monaco, who self-financed it on a budget of about $4,000. She had planned for a much larger budget, but some of her student loans fell through. Monaco wrote and directed the film and had to take on additional roles when crew members dropped out.
“I produced the entire film myself, I found all the cast and the crew myself,” she said.
Her DP and editor are both working professionals who agreed to help out for a fraction of their normal fees They filmed over two days, in two different locations.
“Everybody did it as a favor, they wanted to work with me and they believed in the story,” she said.
The Art Center put out a casting call and its casting director told Monaco that the ad for her film received a record number of responses.
Actresses auditioning for the two female roles really seemed to connect with the characters.
“They came up to thank me for writing a role that didn’t dehumanize Latinas, didn’t sexualize Latinas, wasn’t stereotypical in any way, shape, or form,” she said. “I was showing a Latina you normally don’t see.”
Meeting Brown was screened this fall at the Courage Film Festival in Berlin and the Tulsa American Film Festival in Oklahoma. Next up is the Panamanian Film Festival in Los Angeles, an event which highlights films from Central America as well as work by Latino artists living in the US.
The festival takes place at the historic Los Angeles Theater Center, which is operated by the Latino Theater Company.
“I’m really proud that it’s going to be shown at a Latino-themed theater,” Monaco said.
Since graduating from film school, Monaco has found pretty steady work in the industry in pre-production, post-production, and wardrobe. She hopes to one day direct a thriller based on a script she wrote featuring a teenaged Latina lead.
Although she arrived at filmmaking in her thirties, she feels like she found her true passion at just the right time.
“When I went back to film school I was actually a little bitter that my parents never pushed me in that direction,” she said.
“Now looking back, I’m glad I did PR because that’s what I needed to do to build my experience, my background,” she said. “It makes me more multifaceted and that’s what you need when you tell stories.”
She hopes her film will cause viewers to think about how they’re interacting with people of other races, cultures, and backgrounds. She wants to inspire others to feel like they’re capable of making art and following their passion.
“It’s rare that you see a woman actually pursuing her dreams,” she said. “I’m very lucky.”