Seeking Mavis Beacon

Writer and Director: Jazmin Jones

“The truth,” says Olivia McKayla Ross, “is actually fluid as fuck.” Only nineteen when the project begins, Ross is the technology expert and collaborator of Jazmin Jones, the director of Seeking Mavis Beacon. Together they’ve created a vibrant film full of deceptions, tromp l’oeil and trickery. They make this clear in a notice before it starts. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.

Mavis Beacon was an early and hugely successful computer game that taught a generation to touch type. Unusually, indeed groundbreakingly, when it launched in 1987, the face on the package – a reassuringly human and rather glamourous teacher – was that of a Black woman. Jones spent hours after school on the game. Now she wants to know – who was that woman? From newspaper articles and video footage they piece together a few facts. The model was a Haitian woman called Renée L’Espérance, and she was discovered working at Saks Fifth Avenue. The rest of the film is about the search; but it’s also a celebration of young Black women, a story of friendship and, for Ross, literally a coming-of-age movie.

Jones starts her search , for the actual disc, in her father’s garage. It turns out he doesn’t remember when he got divorced , although Jones does – she was in fourth grade. Memories are elusive. Much of the information available to the filmmakers is drawn from memory. They manage to find a former neighbour of L’Espérance, who only knows she was “very pretty” and “very nice,” and had a son. In a Vodou ceremony, they politely ask that their message falls on Renée’s ears. They visit the two surviving founders of the game, Walt Bilofsky and Joe Abrams, two genial elderly white men who have a slightly different version of how L’Espérance was discovered.

Driving back from that cheery encounter, which included a selfie and a re-enactment of a photoshoot involving a young blond child – who also remembers L’Espérance as “very nice,” Jones calls Ross. “They’re not going to help us,” she says bluntly. Something is being hidden, and Ross, who “could write a book about how to track people down” doesn’t take long to find it. Sleuthing is not their only interest, however. They seek opinions and advice from a number of female Black academics. There is talk of “the coded gaze,” and the fact that it’s no accident that technological helpers , like Alexa , have female voices. Stephanie Dinkins objects to the idea of the Black “caregiver” teaching “so that someone else can have success.” Oddly, Jones raises the idea of a teacher as ‘sexy’. Both are concerned by the objectification of a Black woman. Surely, however, a teacher is also a “professional person in a position of authority?” Centuries of disregard have made Black women acutely respectful of one another. Jones and Ross are aware that L’Espérance may not want to be found, and are careful not to impose. On the other hand, they are unnecessarily outraged when their lackadaisical tech bro landlords borrow their (free) office space, and “tear down images of Black women” – they’ve only taken some pictures off the walls.

The developing friendship between Jones and Ross is fun to watch. They discuss the film while braiding their hair and doing their laundry, and enjoy lurid cakes with Shola Von Reinhold, who says, meaningfully, “You have to loosen the cage” as Ross learns to open a bottle of bubbly. Cinematographer Yeelen Cohen revels in bright colours. The laundromat scene is a delight, as they pile gorgeous pinks and oranges into a trolly, and then settle down on a vivid green bench which happens to be the same colour as Jones’s boots.

The film is entertaining and sometimes confusing. There are probably more deepfakes than meet the eye. It’s not hard to guess that Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey are talking about a different Mavis, and some will recognise the bit from The Marva Collins Story, but other scenes may be re-enactments or just tricks. And whose memory is the truth? Recollections may vary.

Seeking Mavis Beacon is released in UK and Irish cinema on 9 May.