Woman’s Work of the Diaspora

The final installment of our 5-part film series, “Citizen in Pictures,” is subtitled “Woman’s Work from the Diaspora. For this night night of the series, which has been designed as a visual interpretation of the Claudia Rankine award winning book, “CITIZEN in Pictures,” Michelle Materre, our presenting partner and founder of Creatively Speaking curates 2 short works from gifted new female voices in film.

Auntie | by Lisa Harewood

Lisa Harewood is a socially motivated artist whose short film, Auntie, invites contemplation of Caribbean life, immigration, extended matriarchal families and those left behind. Auntie is her debut effort as a writer and director. The film is the tale of a young girl, Kera, who is being raised by her “Auntie,” a parental surrogate who steps in following the preteen’s mother’s migration to London.

A common occurrence in the Caribbean, this sort of arrangement has its downside, as neither child nor caregiver can know when their makeshift family could be torn apart, with deep ties irrevocably ruptured by the child’s departure to rejoin the migrant parent. So goes the story in Auntie.

Auntie is a story that is at once universal — exploring conflicts of kinship, matriarchy and family ties — and particular, in its representations of a Barbadian experience.

Charcoal | by Francesca Andre

Francesca Andre combined her personal experiences with colorism and passion for storytelling into Charcoal, her award-winning film which puts the spotlight on healing from prejudice, discrimination, and preferential treatment based on the skin tone, facial features, and hair textures by people of your own race.

Andre said this about her film, “I wanted to tell a story about healing, about women redefining their own beauty and taking back their power despite the pervasive effects of colorism. I wrote Charcoal as I recalled these painful experiences and events with colorism growing up in Haiti. I was made aware of my skin tone and hair texture at a very young age. I realized that I had internalized these toxic beliefs in my teenage years throughout my adulthood, so I had to unlearn all these misconceptions about beauty, hair, and its relation to one’s worth. I am happy to say that I now have a very healthy relationship with my skin and hair.”