“It was always a self-reflexive journey,” Olivia McKayla Ross tells me of the cinematic quest she took with filmmaker Jazmin Jones to find a tech icon. If you learned to type before 2005 chances are it was with “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing”, a computer program that had a picture of a striking black woman on the front. In their film aptly named Seeking Mavis Beacon, Jones recounts learning to type from the game and always wondering what happened to the woman on the cover.
Together, the two friends joined forces to try and find her, taking to the program’s creators, neighbors, and even her son. Whether or not the woman in question will talk to them is a point of tension throughout the film, cautiously driving their search forward. “This film is very much a coming-of-age about my personal ego death,” Jones says. “You’re watching me spiral out on a project that I started with the best intentions and all these strong political ideas around ‘we’re gonna do this the right way’ and confront that.
You’ll have to see Seeking Mavis Beacon (now in theaters) to find out if Ross and Jones find the real Mavis Beacon, but for now, watch my interview below.
