FRIDA, as a teenager

is in a terrible bus accident.
Surreal animation of hospital scenes.
A full body cast.

Her father buys her an easel and canvas.
While in bed, she paints herself and her sister.
Begins to walk with a cane.

“Do you believe that I should continue to paint?”
She asks Diego Rivera.
He says yes.

Eventually, they get married—-twice.
They visit New York.
“We’ll take Gringolandia by storm!”
But Frida has a miscarriage
and her mother dies.
God has a lot of explaining to do.

Trotsky and his wife Natalia
come to stay with Frida.
Frida and Trotsky make Diego jealous.
Trotsky leaves.

Frida wants a show in her own country.
“They will give you a show
once you are famous somewhere else.”
So Frida goes to Paris.

Meanwhile, Trotsky is assasinated.
Meanwhile, Diego wants a divorce.

When Frida returns she is interrogated and imprisoned.
She loses her toes on one foot to gangrene
and new body casts are made that torture her.
“At the end of the day,
we can endure
more than we think we can,” she says.

In the few years before her death,
she paints the works of her life.
The Two Fridas and The Little Deer, for example.

Frida Kahlo writes her dying wish in her journal:
“I hope the exit is joyful
and I hope never to return.”

***

Look at The Little Deer:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/K/kahlo/kahlo_deer.jpg.html