{"id":171395,"date":"2025-12-19T11:30:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=171395"},"modified":"2025-12-22T14:52:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T19:52:51","slug":"new-funding-pushes-carolina-gonzalez-valencias-film-toward-the-finish-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2025\/12\/19\/new-funding-pushes-carolina-gonzalez-valencias-film-toward-the-finish-line\/","title":{"rendered":"New funding pushes Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia’s film toward the finish line"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, associate professor of art and visual culture, was tired of the ways that she saw representations of women like her mother on the screen. She was weary of the ways that she did not<\/em> see her mother Beatriz on the screen. She hated seeing dynamic people like her mother \u2014 who is funny, creative, and opinionated \u2014 portrayed as quiet and humble domestic workers. Her mother has a \u201cbig personality,\u201d and Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, who is accustomed to using art and film to reach an audience, wanted to create a narrative that captured the complexity of her mother\u2019s experience \u2014 as a domestic worker in the U.S., but also as a full and complex person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"portrait
Beatriz Valencia, the mother of Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, explores the character the two collaboratively invented to get toward the truth of her experience as a domestic worker in the U.S. \u2014 the topic of the forthcoming film, How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps<\/em>. (Courtesy of Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The result is How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps<\/em>, which is in final post-production this month, and will be complete by the end of the year. A recent grant from Unbound Philanthropy gave the final push to bring the film toward completion. In its early stages, though, the biggest obstacle was finding how to authentically tell a story featuring domestic workers that felt new \u2026 and true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia began the process, she sat down to talk to her mother, Beatriz Valencia, about her work. In these early conversations, she saw her mother shrink into a prescribed role. There didn\u2019t seem room for her mother\u2019s complexities to show up in a film when she approached it as a documentarian. She also was aware of \u201cthe complicated waters of having this power of representing another person.\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia began really thinking about how to approach this project \u2014 meant to represent a domestic worker in the U.S. \u2014 collaboratively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia has frequently drawn on collaboration to access authenticity. In an installation in Beirut in 2018, she posted a question (\u201cAre you afraid you\u2019ll keep moving forever?\u201d) on flyers that hung across the neighborhood where she was in residency and invited responses via text. Her 2019 \u201cVideo Postales\u201d featured photographs and videos shared by artists to accompany lines from Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia\u2019s writing. The result was surprising and beautiful \u2014 accessing something more true than she could have created alone. Tapping into her collaborative instinct as well as her background in performance art, Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia engaged her mother in some improvisatory exercises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"portrait
Still from How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps<\/em> featuring Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia’s mother, Beatriz Valencia. (Courtesy of Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet’s pretend I’m a journalist and I’m here to interview you and you’re a very, very accomplished person,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia said to her mother during the early stages of the film. \u201cWhat do you want to be very accomplished at?\u201d Her mother immediately responded that she would want to be a famous writer. What emerged was a central fictional character around which the collaborative genre-bending film took shape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soon as the fictional writer emerged as a character that Beatriz played, her mother spoke more freely and truthfully to her daughter. \u201cThat fiction allowed us to be more honest,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia likely already knew that this film was going to push against boundaries. Documentary is a complicated genre that sometimes poses as simple or straightforward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was really interested in pushing what we can do as a documentary. It’s a form that needs to be questioned because it comes from a legacy of a very colonial way of looking at the \u2018other.\u2019\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia was not traveling to a new land to represent another culture, but she knew that she could still fall into the patterns of misrepresentation if her mother was not empowered as a collaborator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia notes that other artists have blurred genres \u2014 drawing from fiction to access the truth. Author Claudia Rankine, for example, is creating a sort of \u201ccollage\u201d in her writing, which has served as a model for Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia in her art. She also cites two Belgian filmmakers as influences: Chantal Akerman, who explored her own relationship with her mother in genre-blurring documentary films, and Agn\u00e8s Varda, who blurred fiction and fact in her documentary films. Models like these allowed Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia to collaboratively create a documentary about her mother as a domestic worker, who is playing the role of a famous writer in parts of the film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the semester wrapped up, Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia traveled to Splendor Omnia just outside of Mexico City, which she described as a dream studio. This is her first feature-length film, so the experience at Splendor Omnia will not only allow her to finish the film in a very high-end way, but it is also offering Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia an education. \u201cIt’s kind of like a school to me,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"five
Beatriz Valencia featured in the musical sequence of How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps<\/em>. (Courtesy of Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps<\/em> is the result of what happened when Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia and her mother dared to let go of the factual in favor of the truth. Of course deciding upon an approach for the film was only the very beginning. Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia\u2019s project has received a slew of grant support. The production of the film has been made possible by support from sources that include the Sundance Film Festival, Abundant Futures Fund, and the LEF fund. The most recent $50,000 grant from Unbound Philanthropy enabled the film to move into post-production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia has high hopes for the impact that her film can make. Primarily, she wants to contribute to ongoing conversations about narrative structure, domestic work, and immigrant rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don’t believe in the single story,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia said. And when you are part of a group that gets represented by a superficial, single story, the stakes are higher. “I’m interested in being part of the conversation that complicates it, that shows that there is not one story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia and her mother are certainly pushing back against a single narrative created \u201cfrom the perspective of pain and trauma.\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia hopes that this film can show that \u201cwhen we talk about immigrants, when we talk about domestic workers \u2014 we are people full of joy and laughter.\u201d Especially now, she hopes the creativity and joy of the film \u2014 which includes a musical sequence \u2014  will \u201chelp people to feel closer.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia’s feature-length film How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps will be complete by the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1917,"featured_media":171402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":["carolina-gonzalez-valencia"],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010,1,133,14],"tags":[6889,9087],"class_list":["post-171395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-batesnews","category-creativity","category-faculty-staff","tag-performing-and-visual-arts","tag-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1917"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171395"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171559,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171395\/revisions\/171559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}