“To The Girl That Looks Like Me” By Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah
“To The Girl That Looks Like Me” is an experimental poetry piece that celebrates black women, who continue to thrive in a system that was not built for them. This visual poem explores culture, self-love and self-discovery through a string of vignettes that combine dance, folklore, modern culture and spirituality.
“Two summers ago I was terrified for my senior year because I wanted my thesis film to be really special. I had no idea what story I wanted to tell and I felt pretty directionless. The last time I ever felt like that was in primary school. I found this connection interesting and started to think about my time there. The memories inspired me to write the poem, “to the girl that looks like me.” After the poem was complete, I immediately started to see elements of the film come together in my head.
The opening shot actually came to me by way of a nightmare. In it I was 6 again, getting my hair braided in cornrows before school. Only I was in the center of Grand Central Station. Passerby's gawked and stared at me and pointed. Some stopped and took photos, others tried to touch my hair. I felt like an artifact, an object. Obviously at my stage I couldn't shoot in Grand central, but this theme of observation and objectification gave me the idea for a museum-like scene. A girl, surrounded by a room of people watching her, only to steal a piece of her culture and leave her with no credit. The idea of the "viewers" was inspired by my personal experiences as a black woman facing appropriation. As a young girl, I was often teased for my natural hairstyles and made to feel as though they were ugly or shameful. But now, I see non-black women not only wearing culturally black hairstyles but also getting praised for it. In one instance, Kim Kardasian was even credited as inventing cornrows, which the media called, "boxer braids". This infuriated me, and led to my poem, "My rows of corn".
This film celebrates the beauty and strength of black women, as we continue to thrive in a system that wasn't built for us. I wanted young black and brown girls to take away this simple idea, “there is room for you at the top.” I wanted to celebrate blackness in a way I never saw blackness celebrated on the screen. Kente cloth at the forefront, dark skin as the leading lady.
The biggest technical challenge to making this film was money. The cost of filmmaking is intense, and I simply didn’t have the financial resources readily available to just put down. However, this made me really creative, as I found fun and engaging ways to raise my budget. I hosted open mic nights, self-published my first book, and wrote countless grant essays. Creatively, there was a scene that I really wanted a tarantula for. I refused to be talked out of it, and I got my spider. Funnily enough, I never used that cut in the final edit. But I don’t regret pushing for my spider at all. It would’ve been much worse not having it and forever wondering how different my film would be with it.
When I wrote this, I wanted the piece to make non people of colour think, to get a glimpse of what it is like navigating the world as a black woman. But above all, this film is for the black and brown girls watching. My primary hope is that they recognize that their skin is beautiful and that their culture is sacred”.
Credits
Director: Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah
DP: Gabriel Connelly
Producer: Adrian Sobrado
AD: Farah Jabir
Editor: Elliot Farinaro
Music: Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah and Adeleke Ode
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