Why We're Backing Nahui Olin

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Nahui Olin was a painter, poet, and photographer who scandalized 1920s Mexico by insisting — loudly, defiantly, at great personal cost — that women were full human beings. She posed for Diego Rivera. She wrote love letters that burned. She broke every rule a woman of her era was expected to follow. And then history did what it so often does to women who take up too much space: it tried to erase her.

Melissa Eidson is not letting that happen.

Nahui Olin: Cosmic Vision is a hybrid documentary, narrative, and experimental film that brings Nahui's letters, poetry, paintings, and photographs back to life — weaving together imagined scenes, archival material, and an older Nahui reckoning with the full arc of her life. It is being filmed across Mexico City, Veracruz, San Miguel de Allende, Querétaro, and Valle de Bravo, and it is exactly as ambitious as it sounds.

This is the kind of film that could only be made by someone who understands what it means to fight to be seen. Melissa is a filmmaker and professor at Pratt Institute whose work centers the interior lives of women — and in Nahui, she has found a subject whose story is both singular and urgently familiar.

Your donation is tax-deductible through Moonshot Initiative, and every dollar goes directly toward finishing this film. Help us make sure Nahui Olin's voice carries into the next century.