Becoming Black: Film Screening & Discussion with Producer Ines Johnson-Spain

Please join us for the film screening and conversation with producer Ines Johnson-Spain. Made in 2019, the film is in German and French but fully subtitled in English. Free admission and open to the public.

In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.

Born in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), Johnson-Spain, a distinguished German director, screenwriter and filmmaker, presents her autobiographical film –Becoming Black– that deals with her (East)German/Togolese origin. This screening and the discussion afterwards will yield questions and fruitful conversations about the tension between the individual and society.

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