The first time I connected with Guadalupe, we spoke about the bus, Mariposa Relámpago, and what its presence in Marfa, Texas was going to look like. I felt that there was a lot of poignancy and emotion in Guadalupe’s intentions for Marfa, and I wanted the film to reflect that. We thought a lot about how to express the story in an emotional way and how to make the bus feel like a living, breathing, traveling thing, despite the fact that it’ll be installed as a sculpture in the garden at Marfa Ballroom. It was important for us to mirror Guadalupe’s journey with the bus’s journey and find ways to visually represent how the two are entangled and how they defy time.

I wanted the film to feel like a journey, and like each object on screen has an energy it transmits. We included sequences of rapid cuts to see different elements of the journey and planted images throughout the film that are evocative, like we’re in Guadalupe’s memories. Sound is such an important element to Guadalupe’s artistry, so we played a bit with the sound design too, and brought the viewers ear-level to a lot of the things in the film—we hear little plants rustling, grains of metal bouncing when he’s sanding down a cymbal—as a way to enter and prepare viewers for the importance of sound in Guadalupe’s work.

As a filmmaker, I want the experience of filmmaking to be as comfortable and as safe as possible for the participants, especially if they’ve had a powerful and sometimes difficult experience that they’re sharing with me to transmit into the film. I let Guadalupe lead the way in terms of what he wanted to share about the experience he had as an undocumented, unaccompanied child migrating from El Salvador to the United States.

When we got to Marfa, we shot of lot of material that Guadalupe and I had discussed prior to going there, but we also let magical things happen. When we went out into the desert, the wind naturally went through the harmonica, and was playing its own notes. It was a great introduction to Guadalupe’s perspective, not just as an artist, but also as a person, a person who’s working a lot with sound and elements of spirituality.

Through his work, Guadalupe confronts the fears and anxieties that weigh heavily on many communities in the U.S. When we were filming last year, we couldn’t have anticipated releasing the film in the political circumstances we find ourselves in now. Our goal was to create something timeless—untethered from a specific moment—but, unfortunately, its relevance today is undeniable. I hope this piece offers viewers a sense of relief or respite.

César Martínez Barba
Director, “Guadalupe Maravilla’s ‘Mariposa Relámpago’”