Directors: Jazmin Jones

Features: Jazmin Jones, Olivia McKayla Ross

Ostensibly a documentary about locating the real person behind the image of Mavis Beacon, the African American woman who fronted the widely used educational typing software program, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, director Jazmin Jones’s freewheeling film spins off into other, sometimes intriguing, sometimes frustrating, directions.

Our hosts are director Jones, visual storyteller and ‘thot leader’; and her friend, collaborator and ‘cyber doula’ Olivia McKayla Ross.

It begins with a brief history of the program that was launched in 1987. Jones and Ross locate the (White) men who devised the program, where they discover that the face of Mavis Beacon was a Haitian-born model Renee L’Esperance, who vanished soon after its success. What follows is an enquiry into race, appropriation, privacy and consent, delivered in a blizzard of skilfully assembled and vividly colourful online images, with frequent nods to various marginalised groups.

The onslaught of imagery can be overwhelming, the film occasionally meanders and the makers insistence on placing themselves at the centre often feels self-indulgent. Which is a shame as when Jones does get writers and curators to speak, their words are insightful, thought-provoking and in one sequence, refreshingly forthright.

Seeking Mavis Beacon is out 9th May

David Willoughby

Follow David on Bluesky @davidwilloughby.bsky.social