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| All images Courtesy of D. Channsin Berry |
In
2011, film directors, D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke produced Dark
Girls, a documentary-confessional unveiling
the painful stories on Colorism among African Americans, which later premiered to
millions of viewers on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Continuing
the dialog on this discriminatory practice that still exists across all stages
of life, Channsin Berry takes the lead, examining the subject again in Dark
Girls 2 and shares his most emotional moment
while filming this documentary after seeking divine intervention to create the setting
for his youngest participants to disclose the psychological trauma from colorism
in part 2 of this OWN Spotlight feature.
Interiors
of Man: One of the most touching scenes from Dark Girls 2 was your filming the
testimonies of high school girls sharing their painful experiences of being
victimized for their dark skin, and capturing the reaction of a fair skinned
girl appearing not to have realized the gravity of their pain until turning
around and seeing others crying beside her, and then, it hit her.
It was a moment of healing and humanity and [that’s]
where it all begins – the moment when light and dark can empathize with each
other’s painful experiences with Colorism.
D.
Channsin Berry: When I asked a teacher friend of mine,
Fluker, and the assistant principal to put together a group of African-American
girls to talk about Colorism at El Camino Real Charter High School, I expected
no more than five to ten girls and when I got there the assistant principal
said there will be twenty-eight to thirty
girls participating, and after we, (my crew and I), set up, the girls started
trickling in until there were thirty-one girls packed in there and it threw me
off. I said how I’m going to deal with this? So I prayed on it and when I went back in, it
was quiet as a church, and we talked, (off camera), about Black people – girls, boys, men, women … our history.
Then, I asked the question, and after the first hand
went up it was all over and they decided to talk. [That] scene is the hardest scene for me to
watch that I walked out of the screening for that scene with OWN. It took everything within me to take in all
the emotion, trauma, and pain from those babies. When they started showing their emotions,
it was nothing but God and a full-on
healing session. It wore me and the crew
out – a 95% White crew oppose to my
usual 95-98% Black crew with 55% being women of color. Not this time, this time I worked with a few phenomenal friends and technicians
who were White and whom I trusted, and that
day, with those babies, my White crew was done. The teacher and the co-principal were also
done. There wasn’t a dry eye in the
house.
Afterwards, girls who never associated with each
other were hugging and exchanging numbers … and I ask myself what would’ve
happened if that segment never took
place?
God showed up for me on this project long ago before
I got to this planet, and I have dedicated my life to films of healing for us and to educate others.
For more on this segment and Dark Girls 2, search and visit OWN
