Slamdance Film Festival 2010

A Bolivian street merchant takes the name Carmen Rosa to enter the male-dominated world of Bolivian professional wrestling (the Stone Cold Steve Austin kind, as opposed to the Olympic medal kind) and becomes renowned for her fiery performances and her traditional cholita accoutrements. In Betty M. Park’s colorful and genuinely unique film, the aspects that initially turned me off most are what I find, in hindsight, to be the most impressive. During the film I found Carmen Rosa the Champion fairly hard to like. The way she dealt with problems seemed irritating and sometimes shameful. I left the theatre impressed with the director’s overall style and abilities, but more or less grumpy, for lack of a better word. For all this, I feel today that Park’s film is a beautiful, solid documentary. My initial distaste was a personal reaction to material that had, in fact, thoroughly engaged me. I wasn’t going to like Carmen Rosa, no matter what, but ‘liking’ is not what it’s about. Documentaries don’t need a hero. Carmen’s world is richly portrayed, colorful in a way that I can only describe as awesome, and an ample anthropological exposition to boot. -Jesse Hawlish http://www.slugmag.com/festival-coverage/615/Mamachas-del-Ring.html