What I love about documentaries is sometimes you never know what you’re going to get. The title, in this case Seeking Mavis Beacon, doesn’t tell you anything about what you are watching. Going in and not knowing anything about said film can be a good thing. That’s the case with this film. It’s as strange a documentary as I’ve seen in recent years. That’s a good thing though, because I was completely thrown off by what I was watching.

The film focuses mainly on two women. One is the writer/director Jazmin Jones and the other is Olivia McKayla Ross, a college student who is also a coder. Together they had a fascination with typing software with a beautiful Black woman on the cover of the box called “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing”. They weren’t the only ones either. This beautiful woman on this cover fascinated a lot of Black women.  They were shocked that they saw someone who looked like them on this widely used tying software. The problem was she wasn’t a real person.

Using the usual trick of the trade for a documentarian, Jones implements talking heads, narration, archival footage, and photos to help her tell this very strange story. She also uses quite a bit of information on the screen for the viewer to digest. These days it’s hard to make your documentary stand out because there are so many of them being made. The more creative you get the better chances of getting people to watch your film you have. This one is very creative in a good way.

There is an underlying story within the context of this documentary though. It’s about female representation and being something of a role model to other young girls. Specifically Black girls. The talking heads Brooke Terrell, Mandy Harris, and Stephanie Dinkins, who are just a few, tell a story about how they loved seeing this Black woman on the front of this typing software. They had never seen representation like this in their lives. This started giving Black girls the idea they could be something too. Now Black women are everywhere from being filmmakers, politicians, athletes, business owners, and CEO/executives of large companies. Things have changed dramatically for Black women in society.  For the better, I might add.

The weird part about this film is that three men, Walt Bilofsky, Les Crane, and Joe Abrams saw a Caribbean fashion model by the name of Renea Les Bronze, and they thought she would stand out because men were always on the cover of things. Nowadays AI voices tend to be women, Alexia, and Cerie, as examples. It was a marketing tool that turned into a Black female empowerment and representation thing. Who knew this would happen? 

Seeking Mavis Beacon is a documentary that isn’t going to be for everybody. I was certainly taken aback by the subject matter when I started watching it. The thing about these kinds of films is you never know what you’re going to get. As the saying goes “Life Is Like A Box of Chocolates, You Never Know What You’re Going To Get” from Forrest Gump.  This documentary taught me about something I didn’t know about and showed that it’s the little things in life that can motivate others to do big things. Black women will surely like this film. I don’t know about very many others though.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen