ORoriginthe third film by a woman – Ava DuVernay – in Competition at Venice Film Festival 2023 it made a lot of crying. The origins of the title are those of the evil of racism, or rather, of the caste system underpinning racismelaborated by Isabel Wilkerson in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The gestation of this ambitious project is at the center of the plot, that mixes data collection – spread across three continents: America, Europe and Asia – to Isabel’s life (black writer and Pulitzer Prize winner in journalism played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor).
The idea of looking for points of contact between different apparently distant forms of oppression and violence, slavery in the United States and the European Holocaustwas born in Isabel from a famous news story that took place in 2012. That of Trayvon Martina 17-year-old black boy killed by a vigilante as he walked through a residential area in Sanford, Florida. She is asked to write an article about it, but Isabel is reluctant. After the death of her husband (Jon Bernthal) and her mother, and with a sister with cancer, begins to weave the puzzle.
There is a lot of stuff to keep together. DuVernay leaves nothing out, the expert to interview, Primo Levi’s sentence to frame, the pillars of the caste system to explain, and then the historical facts, the horrors of the fields and the images from the slave ships. And in filming everything equally (past and present) it infuses the film with a sense of general television uniformity. A set of suffering which is sometimes a theoretical account, at others it is melodrama with blackmailing but effective music: for example the story of the black child excluded from swimming in the pool.
Jon Bernthal and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in “Origin”. (The Biennial)
Ava DuVernay: «Origin goes to the root of racism
Isabel, the protagonist of Origin, he moves across three continents, historical events among the most sinister and dramatic, and his life. A large-scale film. «Yes – replied Ava in the press conference, also screenwriter and producer – it is a very ambitious, structured and complex film. After reading the book – three times – I wanted everyone to experience this amazing story. The problem was finding an effective structure. That combined the book and Isabel, with whom I spoke for over a year.
Unbelievable but true, Origin it was shot in 37 days and on 16mm, says Ava with satisfaction. An urgent job. But the fact that satisfies her more, as well as being the first black woman in competition in Venice (“it took them 8 decades”), is to see that a film about a story of this kind, a story of black people, has visibility. “You don’t know how many times I’ve been told that nobody wants to hear about us, no Festival would accept these stories (including Venice, so they told me ‘don’t even try’), that it wouldn’t be distributed”. independently produced, Origin it has just been purchased for international distribution (ed).
The film begins with the death of Trayvon Martin. Why did you want to start the film like this? “Because the book – continued Ava – was born from that episode, true beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. His presence remains throughout the film, and in fact I close with him».
From left to right, “Origin” cast and producers: Matthew J. Lloyd, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Paul Garnes, Ava DuVernay, Suraj Yengde and Spencer Averick. (Getty Images))
We can’t get over trauma without dealing with it
There is a line in the film that is often repeated: “We can’t get over trauma without dealing with it.” His sense, which mainly concerns Isabel, characterized the film set during the filming. Indeed, according to Matthew J. Lloyd, director of photography: «Reconstructing scenes of the Holocaust and slavery, or those of poor Indian Dalits immersed in excrement, for the more than 300 people in the film, it meant having a continuous conversation about fears and fragility».
Finally, Ava, connected art and justice. Why this movie which details how violence is a project, a plan studied at the table and applied extensively, it would also like to be an instructive text: «When I speak of imagining a future, I mean that creativity and art aim at the same thing as justice. An artist creates a world that doesn’t exist, justice does the same. Therefore, if the intention of creation is good, the products are, and can, change, give an idea of a possible future. Even teaching us how to oppose it ».
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