"THREE SISTERS FROM A FISHING VILLAGE IN THE WEST INDIES TAKE REFUGE IN BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, following a traumatic event that threatens to reveal a centuries-old family secret."
Ten Cent Daisy is a new film by Lisbon Okafor, featuring a talented cast and crew.
Opens in select theaters and on-demand on October 28th
Preorder on ITunes now.
Watch the trailer now!
2 comments:
This story is for our mothers.
Ten-Cent Daisy breathes life into the African oral storytelling tradition. It plumbs the depths of repressed emotions to tell the story of a Caribbean family’s struggle to overcome a traumatic event. The film explores the dynamics of dealing with family secrets passed down through the generations, from their African roots to the shores of The Americas. It examines how we each respond to trauma, and depend on each other to truly reconcile the past, before we can reach out to an unknown future, together.
The idea for the story took shape twenty-one years ago when I traveled to the island of Grenada for my mother-in-law’s funeral. Her sudden death was a blow to the family. I learned of a local girl that was once under her care. She was ostracized by her community because of her “peculiarities.” No one would speak to these peculiarities; except she was different enough to warrant a collective shun. Her story reminded me of a similar case in my village in eastern Nigeria. A young girl with Down syndrome was teased and humiliated for years out of sheer ignorance about her condition. The villagers believed that her father offered her as blood sacrifice to his gods in exchange for his wealth.
The tendency to treat people we don’t understand differently is all too common. It deserves to be exposed and condemned wherever we find it. I wanted to mobilize such a character to explore what happens to a family once the matriarch—the heart of the family and primary caretaker, is gone.
Many years later, I shared versions of the tale with my young daughter at bedtime. She grabbed on to the fantastical elements of my most embellished version about social discrimination, with a mermaid as the central figure. Her wide-eyed interest inspired me to realize the film project and embrace magical realism as my narrative style. An elegant way to tackle broad social issues. By relocating the story world to my own backyard around the Bay Area, the film presented a rare opportunity to explore the difficulty of navigating life as an immigrant woman of color in America. To examine strategies for survival in a new environment. The responsibilities that follow immigrant families wherever they escape to. The conflict between those that adapt well to their new habitat and those that don’t. And the ones like me who find themselves alienated in both worlds.
I hadn’t heard about this film. Thanks for sharing because I will definitely plan to see.
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