In Search of QUEEN B! is a documentary about how a widowed Asian-American housewife from Connecticut becomes one of the stars of the 2008 Sao Paulo Carnaval in Brazil. More than that, it is a portrait of a life. Intimate as it is sprawling, endearingly outrageous, and ultimately moving.

The subject

BESSIE BADILLA is a quirky character whose upbeat humor has taken her from the working class district of Tondo in Manila, to the haute couture world of Paris where she was a Balenciaga model in the 1980s, to showbiz celebrity in the Philippines, to the suburbs of Stamford where she has lived for the past 16 years as a housewife and mother. 

The lay of the land

QUEEN B! will investigate Bessie’s colorful past and present as a way to understand her indomitable spirit. 

It will visit the places and people that played (and continue to play) a vital role in the shaping of Bessie’s life and character.

It will go to Brazil, Manila, Paris, New York, Connecticut, and back.

It will feature conversations with an eclectic and electric set of colorful people to shed light on what makes Bessie tick and what makes them respond so vividly to her. They include: Sister Mary Placid, her mother's convent school classmate, joining in Bessie's irrepresible antics; Bessie’s mentors, co-models and designers as she rose to become a top model in her home country; her Parisian guardians who made sure Bessie survived her four years in the cutthroat fashion scene in France; the Sao Paulo Carnaval organizers who found in Bessie the embodiment of what they were looking for and made her the Destaque (or star) of three escolas de samba; and the Philippines’ former First Lady Imelda Marcos in whose entourage Bessie traveled the world.

(Bessie seen here with Mrs. Marcos and Lucas Gil, Mr. Brasil 2007)

Part of the film will also delve deeply into Bessie’s life in America raising a family as wife to a successful businessman and mother to three daughters. Despite undergoing health and domestic problems, Bessie has invariably picked herself up, bruises and all. She captivates and inspires everyone she encounters - as an award-winning cake maker, a ballet dancer, a Chinese brush painter, a published book editor, an art patron and even as a percussionist in a band. It was while applying the finishing touches to a costume for her daughter’s school play that she found her husband dead, suddenly, from a brain aneurysm. 

How Bessie became the First Filipina Carnival Queen at the Sao Paulo Carnaval provides a colorful backdrop to her story and the documentary looks at how Bessie’s amazing attitude towards life provides a springboard from which she leaps from one unforgettable experience to the next. l

The climax

In February 2008 she burst onto the world-renowned Sao Paulo Carnaval in Brazil, dancing for three different escolas de samba as its Destaque or brightest star.

She danced for the moment. She danced in memory of times past and in glorious anticipation of those yet to come. She danced the dance of her life and through this documentary, we will dance with her in celebration of the triumph of the human spirit. 

Viva Queen B!