In Conversation with Filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain
Abstract
- Abstract
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In October 2022, the Africa Mulitple Cluster of Excellence invited filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain to show her film "Becoming Black" for a group of young students. The discussion that ensued was both interesting and enlightening with the students asking questions about the porcess of making a movie to societal questions about racism. Later that day, the filmmaker sat down with PhD student Marie Tsogo to discuss her movie and biography.
In her autobiographical documentary "Becoming Black" Ines Johnson-Spain takes the audience on the route of discovery of her roots and paternal family after having grown up in the German Democratic Republic.
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- In Conversation with Filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain
- Language
- English
- Date
- November 10, 2022
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- foreign [Music] [Laughter] good evening and I'm very happy to do this interview with you uh I would like first of all to say thank you for this wonderful film we watch in the morning becoming black my first question is to know uh why did you choose to do this film um yes there are several answers possible but I start with the yeah for me nearest one this is that I actually wanted to I started to work on a new film and I thought to work on a film about my grandfather her fatherly grandfather um who lived in dahumi which is now Benin and who was a resistance fighter against the French colonial power was banned and in prison for many years and so on and I never met him he died long time before I was born and but people from the family told me a lot about him a lot of stories Legends whatever and I thought it could be an interesting way for me to appropriate my own um tulis Benin family site and yeah I started to work on it and I noticed that there's something lacking there's something missing and I felt strange in this relationship to my family in the way that I couldn't really Define my own position in it and that's why one after another different questions came up and so I had to confront this and I decided to postpone it in a way to say I first have to yeah take care of these questions which were really like who am I in general who am I as a black person who am I as a as a person as a member of this family and so on and um that's what I did with becoming black a very nice title becoming black and my second question is to know if we are born black or do we become black what what what why did you choose this philosophy philosophical title becoming black um I'll be born black I I hope we are not born black uh I hope I think um I mean for me on and also the way how I chose this film it is uh that I was aware of this um how do you say this in English it is um yeah how do you say um izoom [Music] um I start again with this sentence um but you can it's okay okay um so I I… Read the full text about 4,141 words
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