CULTURE

Ava DuVernay’s ORIGIN urged me to reclaim my personal power in a system made to break us

Despite a system created to divide, our shared humanity brings us together

I have wept more in the last three days than I have in a year, locking myself in bathrooms, sitting alone in the car late at night, even during a visit to the chiropractor – as the physical pain melded with the emotional turmoil. Adapted from Isabel Wilkerson’s book ‘Caste: The Origins of our Discontents’, I knew Origin would strike me deeply, much like the book had.  But, what I did not expect was the profound impact the film would have on the way I viewed myself in my personal life, in the here and now. 

The week prior, working on my own screenplay on caste, having been rejected for government funding, atop countless pitches with producers ending with “the story of your personal experience with caste is a powerful endeavour but just not right for us” canned replies – I decided maybe it was time to put this project on hold, or maybe it was just not meant to be at all. 

As a journalist covering The Toronto International Film Festival, I met Ava DuVernay on the red carpet for the premiere screening of Origin.  In the most unprofessional interview of my career, I sobbed through our entire conversation, unable to compose myself to ask any of the questions I had prepared. Instead just expressing my deep gratitude that she made this film for the world to see.  Leaving the carpet feeling part sheepish, part proud of sharing my vulnerability, I couldn’t stop thinking about that encounter with Ava.

Two days later, I saw the film at its second screening.  Before heading into the theater, I walked into a coffee shop. I asked a woman sitting in the lounge area if she could watch my things while I used the restroom.  When I found my seat in the theater, it turned out we were sitting two seats apart. In between us, also by chance was a fellow press member who was next to me on the red carpet press line earlier that week. Her kindness to me that afternoon when I was in shambles was not lost on me.

 I don’t think it was mere coincidence that the three of us – a Black woman, a white woman and myself, a Dalit woman found ourselves sitting side by side in that theater together. I don’t think it was by chance that moments before the film began, I told these two strangers about my father’s experience as a Dalit child; how he wasn’t allowed to drink from the water well at school with his ‘dirty lips’, that he sat at the back of the classroom rendered nameless, instead called BC (backward class), how even his shadow was considered impure.  I told them about the way Dalit female bodies are abused, raped and discarded – the precise things we would later see in the film. 

I shared my personal experiences with caste in Canada – hiding my identity until very recently - growing up overhearing conversations with friends and associates about the filth of cleaning toilets, what it meant to be “a suitable partner” for marriage and derogatory jokes about Dalit intelligence or lack thereof.  I told them how those experiences changed me.  I don’t think it was chance that the three of us collectively experienced the gut-wrenching grief and weight of the film. I think it was serendipity that put us together.  To feel that deep pain, weep and comfort each other with a greater understanding of our shared humanity.

 After the film and a rousing standing ovation, Producer Paul Garnes & Director Ava DuVernay came out on stage for a Q&A. I was fortunate to ask a question during the session. 

The visceral power of this film, the deep care taken by DuVernay in making it, and the serendipitous meeting with two strangers (the woman in the coffee shop happening to be a producer) have stirred something inside that can’t be shaken.

 Ava told us during the Q&A she decided to step away from the big studio system to produce Origin herself, on her terms.  I have always lived in the periphery in my career – just not quite good enough for mainstream media, but readily acceptable for ‘diversity’ gigs.  Ava has given me hope that I don’t need validation from those who don’t value me, my worth. They may hold certain power. But so do I. I have the will and power to tell my story, and I will make it happen, with or without them.  Ava gave me that.

The film shares our interconnectedness across countries through the hierarchies that have been created to keep us apart.  But it also reminds us we are not defined by those boxes society places us in.

Will the millennia-old system of caste that has oppressed people from across the continents end with this film? If only it were that simple. But this film will spark conversation. Necessary ones.

Dalit means ‘the broken ones’. But there are cracks in the wall, and one day the system will crumble.

This film reminded me that we create our identity – as individuals, our words, our actions define our identity -- our legacy.  We have a shared humanity and if we can see it in each other, in the strangers sitting next to us, there is hope.

TUNE IN!