Dir. Jazmin Jones
2024, USA, 102 min
If you touched a keyboard in the 1980s, you may very well be familiar with the face and legacy of Mavis Beacon: an unsung hero of Black history who taught a generation of kids to type. Determined to preserve a piece of tech history, the filmmakers head on a quest to find Renée L’Espérance — the Haitian woman who portrayed the in-game typing instructor. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that L’Espérance occupies a special place in the collective cultural memory: Was she real, or just a projection of a desire to connect with an emerging tech culture that shut out minority voices? This unpredictable hybrid doc experience deploys cutting-edge cinematic language and a unique brand of investigative journalism to drive its neo-noir feel, as it integrates interviews and archival internet videos to understand the space Renée L’Espérance represents. Buoyed by friendship and rooted to their intuition, the investigators utilize ancestral rituals of healing, transformative justice frameworks, and community support to seek resolution.
“In this twisty, provocative hybrid documentary, filmmakers Jazmin Renée Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross set out to answer one set of burning questions and instead find themselves navigating a much thornier journey of artistic discovery and reclamation.” – Jen Yamato, Washington Post
