A small crowd of students congregated in one of LAC’s D building lecture halls this past September to watch a screening of the rackous documentary Ovarian Psycos, bookended by commentary and a small Q and A section with one of the documentary’s main stars, Xela de la X.
O.V.A.S (One Very Angry Antiauthoritarian Squad) a Chicanx, feminist collective based in Boyle Heights, had this documentary created about them and filmed over the course of 4 years, almost constantly in front of the camera placed there by the film’s two directors.
Also known as the Ovarian Psycos, the group focuses on community providing services to the Boyle Heights community to fight against violence, oppression, and gentrification in their neighborhoods.
Ovarian Psycos, follows three different women within the group, one being Xela de la X. Xela (pronounced Che-lah) is one of the original co-founders of OVAS, forming the group as a “refuge for the runaway, for the throwaway.”
Xela grew up in Boyle Heights, facing hardships in her family life. The documentary takes the time to talk with Xela about her childhood, and how the dysfunction and violence that shaped her life eventually drove her to create her own community with the Psycos.
The group, in its inception, was a cycling squad. A group of women from Boyle Heights taking back the streets and rallying against the violence everyday women face. Xela, and eventually other members, would organize group bike rides, “Luna Rides”, on the full moon every month.
These rides were meant to be in the spirit of community, to “promote autonomous community building” not just within Boyle Heights, but all of East LA. Rides would be attended by other collectives and everyday people who believed in what OVAS stood for. It’s what the Ovarian Psycos became known for.
One guest, Karla Ramirez spoke of the impact Ovarian Psycos left on her. “It was really emotional for me,” she said. “It made me cry because women of color are still being attacked, it could happen to my own sisters and friends.”
After the documentary screening, attendees were able to ask questions to Xela de la X herself through a Zoom meeting, the floor open for anyone in attendance to speak with the co-founder featured in Ovarian Psycos.
There were some technical mishaps, as there always tends to be, but soon enough, Xela appeared on the large screen projector, her voice greeting the few guests seated in the lecture room.
With no questions from the audience quite yet, Xela began to speak. She spoke to what she felt the main takeaway of the documentary to be: that community is vital and necessary, especially in neighborhoods so deeply impacted by the struggles of poverty, violence, and generational trauma.
She also expressed some of her dissatisfaction with the documentary in retrospect, commenting that she wished the opportunity had been more practical to her, rather than “voyeuristic” in its attempts to document the intimate lives of OVAS members like herself.
As the crowd warmed up, questions trickled in. One such question being about the OVAS current activities.
“We’re focused more on community now,” Xela said. “We still do food and clothing drives, but not the [Luna] rides.”
She explained that since the 2016 documentary, OVAS has strived to increase the amount of resources it can provide to the Boyle Heights community, opting to stay locally involved and remaining a collective rather than becoming any sort of non-profit organization.
This community-centric mentality is clear in all of De La X’s responses. “When we see our community as underfunded, we miss what it already has”
Another audience member asked about Xela’s five year plan for OVAS. Xela laughed. “There is none! We’re all gonna die.”
The response drew laughter from the crowd, some nodding along in agreement with the sentiment of her comment. She elaborated that with the way the collective works, there are rarely any set plans. She did add that she hoped to venture into media production in the future, spreading the anti-athoritarian beliefs Ovarian Psycos are so fond of.
”We embraced the psychosis” she stated, “because trying to live life like everything is normal is crazy to us”