Legendary actor Rita Moreno is finally being recognized as a Latin pioneer.
After a seven-decade career and dozens of credits in film, theater and television, the Puerto Rican actor – who is one of 16 artists to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony – is the subject of the highly documentary anticipated, “Rita Moreno: just a girl who decided to go ahead,” which opens at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Mariem Pérez Riera, the 90-minute documentary chronicles Moreno’s extraordinary life and career, detailing the high points of his rise to Hollywood stardom and the low points of pernicious sexual abuse and relentless racism that she endured throughout the way. After bursting onto the scene in 1961 with his Oscar-winning performance in “West Side Story”, Moreno’s struggles as a Latin artist, as well as his blatant gender and racial equality activism, seem more relevant than ever.
“The first time I interviewed Rita, I prepared a series of questions about the greatest moments of her career. As soon as she started speaking, I immediately found myself reflected in her responses, ”wrote Pérez Riera in his director’s note. “I related everything she was saying, her stories about discrimination, the insecurities she felt because of the way others saw her, complicated love relationships and the constant need to work three times as hard to prove to others that she was worthy.
By sharing a common cultural heritage and an “artistic sensibility” with the 89-year-old actress, Pérez Riera felt that she could relate to Moreno in a way that other people couldn’t. Together with his Puerto Rican colleague and longtime collaborator Ilia J. Vélez-Dávila, Pérez Riera worked closely with a handful of creators – including executive producers for “One Day at a Time” Norman Lear and Brent Miller – to create an intimate portrait of a woman who endured decades of hardship to break the barriers of the Latin artists who would follow her.
“We always knew that we wanted this documentary to be not just a showreel of his career and how great it is,” Pérez Riera told NBC News. “When I make or watch a documentary, I want to be able to get to know that person more than I already know, so it was very important for me to go deeper and understand him as a human being.”
To give the documentary an air of authenticity, the filmmakers accompanied Moreno over the course of a few months in late 2018, offering a glimpse into his everyday life – making his breakfast, fixing his hair and makeup, going to work long hours as an actor and producer. In addition to Moreno’s sincere reflections, the film features interviews with more than a dozen of his friends and former colleagues, including also actor George Chakiris from “West Side Story”, as well as Morgan Freeman, Whoopi Goldberg, Gloria Estefan, Eva Longoria , Justina Machado and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
“She is simply a brilliant woman,” Vélez-Dávila told NBC News. “She is self-taught. She is also smart on the streets, so she is very wise and it really surprised and impressed me. “
“She has that BS radar,” said Pérez Riera, “and loves to talk to anyone because I think that’s how she understands and gets more information about what’s going on in the world and not just in her bubble”.
In the documentary, Pérez Riera weaves stop-motion animation using paper dolls – popular during Moreno’s childhood – to explore “Rita’s inner child” and “capture the duality of Rita and Rosita”, who was his nickname while growing up. Moreno was born in Puerto Rico and moved to New York as a child.
“When I was writing the proposal, [idea] came to my mind because in her book, she talks a lot about her mother dressing her and making her clothes since she was a seamstress ”, said Pérez Riera. “I always imagined her having to put on these dresses to become the person that her mother or the audience wanted her to be.”
During the early decades of his career, Moreno was labeled as any ethnic minority that major Hollywood studios needed in his films – from Egyptians to Native Americans and overly sexualized Hispanic women – often with much darker skin than hers. Even after becoming the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, Moreno struggled to find roles that matched his proven talent.
Moreno shows no signs of slowing down. After four successful seasons on the underrated sitcom “One Day at a Time”, she will produce and star in the remake of Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake, playing a reinvented version of Doc, corner store owner Tony worked .
Although Moreno may not fully understand the profound impact it has had on generations of artists, Pérez Riera and Vélez-Dávila hope that viewers can be inspired by their resilience.
“I would love for people to be inspired by your story – not necessarily your praise, but your ongoing struggle to become the person you are today,” said Pérez Riera. “Just her self-awareness, she wants to become a better human being, undergoing therapy to become free.”
Pérez Riera was referring to an episode about which Moreno wrote in his 2013 memoirs, his toxic relationship with Marlon Brando, which led to her attempting suicide a year before she won the Oscar.
“Mariem was very clear from the beginning when she wanted to tell a story that would take Rita’s life as a leitmotiv to tell these other parts of her life and not to tell a typical biographical film of her life,” said Vélez-Dávila. “I think it’s a documentary for people to get inspired and see that anything is really possible.”
“Rita Moreno: Just a girl who decided to go ahead” opens on Friday, January 29, at 3 pm Eastern Time, at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. A second screening will be available from Sunday at 10am ET for 24 hours.
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