Director. Producer. Camera Operator. Lizette Barrera has taken on many roles in her pursuit of a filmmaking career; her credits span the HBO-distributed Mosca (Fly) to assisting with Deep in the Heart of Texas: Dave Chappelle Live at Austin City Limits.
When I first met her, she was working as an Assistant Director (AD) on an independent feature in East Texas and she was one off the hardest working people on the set.
Now, after three weeks of filming, she deserves a break. So, I talk to her while she digs into a tub of Mad Mike’s premium ice cream. Delicious.
‘I enjoyed being 2nd AD,’ Barrerra says, ‘I liked the organizational [aspect].’ But her main focus is directing; by assuming other jobs, she can find what they entail. ‘I feel more comfortable doing a specific role if I know what the other roles are about. I had to take other roles so I could become a better director.’
While Barrera’s online blurb describes her as, ‘a Chicana filmmaker based in Dallas/Ft. Worth,’ she identifies as a filmmaker first and foremost. ‘I consider myself a Chicana. I dropped the label in my bio because I wanted to be just a filmmaker, who happens to be a Chicana and who happens to make films about Chicanos. My activism is through my writing, the stories I decide to put on screen. I want to show diversity, what a Chicano looks like, what a Mexican looks like.’
Barrera’s short films have correspondingly short titles (Rubies, iCome!), and at first glance they seem simple. But they explore the complex themes of family, relationships and sense of place. ‘Mosca was a common term I heard when I was a kid,’ says Barrera, as in, ‘get that fly out of the kitchen.’ Barrera combined that phrase with collective stories she’d heard from friends to create the fictional account of a girl’s relationship with her cousin, to the consternation of the girl’s mother..
Mosca made its mark on over a dozen film festivals, winning “Best Texas Film” at the Austin Under the Stars Film Festival 2018 and the “Filmmakers to Watch” award at the Women in Texas Film Festival 2016.
‘I would hope to bring more filmmaking to Texas,’ says Barrera, who lives in Arlington. Her parents are half an hour away in Lewisville. ‘I am very blessed because they are super supportive. They challenge me, probably more than I want!’
The filmmaker credits her storytelling father as a big influence on her career. One of the key moments she recalls is her father’s comparison of Mexico and the USA. ‘We were leaving Mexico; the sun hadn’t risen yet and you could see the defined look of Mexico.’ Her father explained how they were lucky to be born on the US side and how they were one degree from being born on the other end. ‘He made me value my one degree of separation, having access to a different education. He really helped move my outlook.’
Barrera’s next challenge is to turn her short film Chicle (Gum) into a feature, with a $5000 development grant from the Austin Film Society. ‘It’s about family, death and love,’ she says. ‘We can’t choose our families, who we come into this world with.’ But we can choose to love them – a choice Barrera examines, among many other important ideas, in her fascinating films.