Digital Diaspora Family Reunion started off the school year at Temple University! Thomas Allen Harris and Don Perry were invited by the Film Media Arts department to bring a mini-DDFR workshop for students to engage with narratives within their own family albums as well as to bridge inter-generational and cross-cultural differences.
Stories and photographs were shared, taking the classroom on a journey from Peru to North Korea, from the 1940’s in Philly to the 1870s in South Carolina, all the way from Japan to Chicago, and from San Diego to China.
Rea Tajiri, Temple University professor and filmmaker, posted the following statement on Facebook:
“Just screened Through A Lens Darkly to my undergrad doc class (8 men and two women) They were very moved. We’re viewing it for Thomas Allen Harris’ visit to Temple Saturday — I feel like some missing part of me has been restored. I think others may feel the same way when we finally publish the photos from my father’s documentation of the Japanese American community who ‘migrated’ to Chicago after the internment camps closed; a more complete and dimensional portrait; the answer to the mystery. We reclaim our humanity when we’re given full access to these images (by ‘we’ I mean all of us: white folks, black folks, brown folks).”
Reelblack TV‘s Mike D spoke with Thomas and Don to further discuss DDFR as well as the film. Thomas explains, “It’s not simply about finding photographs, its also about creating a sacred space where we come together and are able to share who we are, and in sharing who we are and where we’ve been to create a kind of vision for… 1World1Family. In a sense that we have more in common than the differences that keep us apart.”
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