Shining a Light on Black and Brown Representation in Film

“But mama told me my God was black.” That’s what Natalia says standing beside the altar at her baptism in the independent film “Ori Inu: In Search of Self.”

In this Afro-futuristic tale of self-discovery, which went online Friday, Natalia is taken from Brazil, where she lived with her grandmother, to the United States as a small child. She later finds herself rejecting the Christianity imposed on her by her pious mother and being drawn to the life she once knew. Back then, her grandmother practiced Candomble (a Brazilian religion with roots in Africa) and the gods were black, unlike the depictions of Jesus Christ in her new home.

The film, by sibling team Chelsea and Emann Odufu, explores the 18-year-old woman’s conflict between her Afro-Brazilian religious roots and her Judeo-Christian surroundings. In depicting an aspect of an immigrant’s internal clash rarely seen on American screens, the Odufus captured black and brown skin tones with rich visuals that have made a strong impression on the festival circuit.

The short film “exposes the theme of whether or not — especially as a black immigrant when you come to America — do you kind of shed your cultural aspect and the aspects of your culture that you once had to assimilate in America?” said Chelsea Odufu, herself the child of Nigerian and Guyanese immigrants, speaking of the larger questions immigrants face when they try to reconcile their cultural practices and beliefs with American norms.

Natalia finds herself in constant battle with her mother, a former drug addict turned born-again Christian, even as the gods of the spirit world try to bring the young woman back to the religion of her grandmother.

As it travels between the realistic and the spiritual, “Ori Inu” — which means “inner head,” or one’s inner self, in the Yoruba culture of West Africa — uses lighting and postproduction techniques to distinguish divinity from humanity. It also emphasizes the deep subtleties in black and brown skin tones through colors that add a dreamlike, surreal feeling without losing the reality of the actors’ features.

“It’s about showing people the beauty of the bone structure,” explained Chelsea Odufu, 24, a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. “We wanted people to, at all times, be like, ‘Wow these black people on frame look beautiful’ or ‘They look fresh.’ ‘They’ve got smooth skin.’ ‘They’re glowing.'”

They used a variety of methods to achieve their desired look, sometimes “fussing with lighting,” as Emann Odufu put it, or adding color in postproduction. Odufu, 29, an activist who fuses social justice issues and art, said it also helped to have a makeup artist who “really knows how to make our actors’ and actresses’ skin absorb and reflect the light being shined on them.”

The film, which took about two weeks to shoot, is one of several examples in recent years of television productions and films working to ensure that actors of all shades are well-lit with greater accuracy. The standouts include the best picture Oscar winner “Moonlight” and the HBO series “Insecure.”

“The good thing now, in general, we are seeing a lot more diversity in color on screen,” Chelsea Odufu said. “So before it was easy for directors or filmmakers to get away with overexposed lighting or lighting that really didn’t show the dynamic or diversity in color palettes because the industry was casting for the same color, and same kind of look, and the same girl or the same guy.”

Ava Berkofsky, one of the cinematographers for “Insecure,” said, “Treating darker skin tones as secondary is not acceptable anymore because there are people of color in the driver’s seat.”

“Cinematography is like a painting,” she explained, and added, referring to “Ori Inu”: “You can use subjective colors and create a world that emotionally ties colors to different ideas, and in that case different deities, and have an emotional impact.”

Odufu said they turned to color to embody the gods’ essence. Her brother said his favorite scene, from a cinematography point of view, used reds to invoke the world of a hybrid they created between Yoruba god Eshu and Haitian voodoo god Papa Legba. He also singled out their vision of the maternal goddess, Yemaya, whom they represented with blue undertones to depict her special connection to the water.

The director of photography, Frances Chen, said that using colored lighting was a good choice for the darker complexions in the film. It shows “the natural richness in human skin. The reflective quality of this colored light still reads on that person, but that person doesn’t all of a sudden become like the girl who turns into a blueberry on ‘Willy Wonka.'”

As for the Odufus, they have finished the pilot of a proposed digital series called “Black Lady Goddess,” which borrows from science fiction and pop culture to make racial and social commentary. In their working relationship, Emann is the envelope-pushing visionary, while Chelsea takes on a more hands-on role. But they both share a desire to explore the “full spectrum of blackness,” he said, adding that they wanted “to create a platform where the black skin was shown in its full exuberance.”