Journey to Justice

For filmmaker Jari Osborne, November 11 was as unremarkable a day as the next. Watching her father, Alex Louie, during his annual Remembrance Day ritual, Osborne always thought of him as sentimental. However, in discovering her father's involvement in World War II, she uncovers a legacy of discrimination and politically sanctioned racism against British Columbia's Chinese-Canadian community. Sworn to secrecy for decades, Osborne's father and his war buddies now vividly recall their top-secret missions behind enemy lines in Southeast Asia. Theirs is a tale of young Chinese-Canadian men proudly fighting for a country that had always mistreated them. Told in the voice of a thankful daughter, this multi-layered documentary does more than reveal an important period in Canadian history. It pays moving tribute to a father's quiet heroism.

In the 1930s in rural Ontario, farmer Bill Reid buried the tombstones of a Black cemetery under a pile of broken rocks to make way for a potato patch. In the 1980s, descendants of the original settlers, Black and White, came together to restore the cemetery--but there were hidden truths no one wanted to discuss. Deep racial wounds were opened. Scenes of the cemetery excavation, interviews with residents and re-enactments--including one of a baseball game where a broken headstone is used for home plate--add to the film's emotional intensity. Meet Helen and Alan Miller, seventh-generation Black Canadians and members of the cemetery restoration committee. And Les Mackinnon, a fiery, fourth-generation Scottish Canadian who heads the movement to restore the Priceville cemetery. Speakers for the Dead reveals the turmoil stirred up by desecrated graves and underlines the hidden history of Blacks in Canada. Speakers for the Dead was produced as part of the Reel Diversity Competition for emerging filmmakers of colour. Reel Diversity is a National Film Board of Canada initiative in partnership with CBC Newsworld.

Speaking biologically, 'race' is a spectral concept. Black, brown, red, white, and yellow, considered purely as skin colours, merit no more significance than a tattoo. The 'skin your're in' is about as meaningful as ectoplasm. Scientists remind us that not only are we all essentially the same, but we all have the same genetic ancestor. Eve was a black, African woman. Nevertheless, history and politics, sociology and economics, transform skin colour - 'race' - into either a golden sheathe or a leaden prison of shame. In Europe and North America, blackness can still seem a burden. It can still brand its possessors as uncivilized, exotic, and menacing. But it can also be prized, lusted after and viewed as a precious enhancement, like gold foil. In Race Is a Four-Letter Word, director Sobaz Benjamin highlights Canadian contradictions and conflicts around race. Heroically, he exposes himself, too: a black man who grew up hating himself, trying to bleach his skin with chemicals, and then struggling to appreciate the meaning of his culture and heritage as an 'Afro-Saxon' Briton, then Grenadian and now Haligonian-Nova Scotian-Canadian. Courageously, Benjamin strips away the masks and armour of race, of blackness and whiteness, to reveal the vulnerable and human, including that very sex that inspires so much primal envy and dread. This brave film forces us to unmask and to look unflinchingly at our real selves. Sobaz Benjamin showcases the stories of a white man who is culturally and psychologically black; of a black woman who wants to be considered iconically Canadian; of another black woman who retreats to England rather than continue to face Canada's racial cold war; and of himself, a black man who has learned to love his complexity. In the end, Race Is a Four-Letter Word teaches us that the soul has no colour. Yet, we also learn that race is a marathon we are all forced to run. Race Is a Four-Letter Word was produced as part of the Reel Diversity Competition for emerging filmmakers of colour. Reel Diversity is a National Film Board of Canada initiative in partnership with CBC Newsworld.