Digital Diaspora Family Reunion @ SILVERDOCS

 

“I like to see how these photos stretch across generations . . . “

                                      Sam Hampton – Management Consultant & Filmmaker

 

 

“So what’s your story . . . ?”  Thomas Allen Harris smiles broadly as he greets a young woman toting a canvas bag full of slightly worn, cloth-bound photo albums she recently unearthed from her families dusty attic. For three days, Harris and his film production team took over a corner of the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center to document the photographic histories of local residents of Silver Springs, Maryland and beyond as part of the innovative new multimedia project that taps into a vast network of black photographic archives across the nation to bring a fresh look at  African American history and community that interweaves community engagement, media literacy, and audience development. 

 

“A Fresh Look at African American Archives” was a featured program of the 2009 SilverDocs Documentary Festival and International Documentary Conference.  Now in its seventh year, SilverDocs has quickly become known for its support of “diverse voices and free expression of independent storytellers and [that] celebrates the power of documentary to enhance our understanding of the world.”

 

One of the special guests on this year’s SilverDocs stellar roster was noted newspaper journalist and sought after television commentator, Clarence Page, who raved about Thomas Allen Harris’ African American Photo Archives endeavor, “I hope this project inspires all, its inspired me to call up my relatives, the young folk who are doing the family tree, to know the people who took the photographs.”  Page’s frank, funny, and intimate family photo remembrances were the highlight of the final SilverDocs public panel which featured Photography from the African Diaspora that had been collected during the week long dcoumentary festival. 

 

Diana Ingraham, who started with SilverDocs in 2004 as the founding producer of the International Documentary Conference, invited Harris and his team to be part of the annual June gathering of filmmakers, programmers, media professionals, and documentary fans.  Harris’ “A Fresh Look at African American Archives” was a unique addition to the line up of over 122 documentaries from around the world and the dozens of panels and workshops that took place about halfway between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC.

 

The annual American Film Institute (AFI) – Discovery Channel SilverDocs Festival hosted Thomas Allen Harris and his crew as they documented families who came from across the region to share their own family archives as part of the “Digital Diaspora Family Reunion” collaborative process where photography from the African Diaspora is gathered, tagged, and charted across time, place, and genre.  Using the power of new and emerging interactive platforms, Digital Diaspora makes the exciting stories of black photography accessible technologically, geographically, and culturally to current and future generations.

 

“It was great to be taken back to the early 1900s and share  photos that my Great Aunt had preserved for so many years. And, it brought me joy to re-collect some of the memories of my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother as seen through their photos.”  Dominique Smith – Maryland Technology Consultant  

 

With the skills he has garnered during his twenty-year career in news and documentary production and as founder and president of Chimpanzee Productions, Inc., Harris is using his industry insights to develop a new model of participatory nonfiction filmmaking where the public contributes content that helps unlock hidden or forgotten histories.  Harris’ “Digital Diaspora Family Reunion” is an easily accessible interactive meeting place where individuals are encouraged to place themselves into a dynamic multimedia environment in which photographs tell the diverse stories of peoples of African descent. 

 

With targeted outreach to local families spearheaded by SilverDocs consultant, Wendy K. Grant – managing director of KenJo Communications, “Digital Diaspora Family Reunion”; participants from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC arrived at the AFI Theatre and Cultural Center with family photographs in tow and within three days, sixteen individuals – representing families from across North America, the Caribbean, and Africa – had a sampling of their family photos scanned by Harris and his team.  Virginia based filmmaker and SilverDocs staffer, Zohar Rom, wrangled the never-ending logistics of creating a documentary interview environment in the midst of a spirited film festival. 

 

With the assistance from over two-dozen SilverDocs volunteers, cinematographer, Anthony Phillips, captured the vitality of Thomas Allen Harris’ interviews with all of the individuals who brought photographs to share.  Many folks who start looking into their past are surprised by what they find.  According to Digital Diaspora participant Bernice Bennett, “I started searching for my roots in 2004 but I was looking for my South Carolina roots… and on the journey I learned about family I didn’t’ know, I found the slave owners of my family.”

 

Every manner of photographic images could be found during the three days of filming by Harris and his crew.  Everything from 19th century daguerreotypes to 1950s Brownie camera snapshots to digital images from a cell phone chronicled the lives of American families making their way in the world.  Senior SilverDocs production volunteer and multimedia journalist, Cassie M. Chew, commented on how exciting it was to see, “more than a dozen subjects who eagerly shared their treasured photos and the stories behind the images with the filmmakers.”

 

The Digital Diaspora Family Reunion “roadshow” will be making on location and ‘virtual’ stops across North America during the next eighteen months which will lead up to the national PBS broadcast of Thomas Allen Harris’ companion project, the feature-length documentary “Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People,” which will premiere in the winter of 2010/11.

The next stop for the Digital Diaspora Family Reunion will be the National Association of Media Arts Centers (NAMAC) biennial convention which will take place in at Park Plaza Hotel In Boston, Massachusetts.

 

If you would like to learn more about having the “Digital Diaspora Family Reunion” roadshow visit your community, please contact Thomas Allen Harris at Tel: (212) 281-6002 or Email:  throughalensdarkly@gmail.com.

 

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