New film addresses race, ancestral trauma and women at work
By Jennifer Cloer
Featuring Dawn Jones Redstone & Ana del Rocío
The film MOTHER OF COLOR brings into focus the life of a single mother of two who dreams of running for office but constantly has to make hard choices between her kids and her career. It’s a timely and important story that underscores the unpaid labor of working mothers in our culture and their access to childcare, the tradeoffs mothers are sometimes forced to make between career and family and how these issues disproportionately affect women of color.
The film goes a level deeper, too, to explore both the trauma and the wisdom that is handed down from our ancestors in these moments, whether through lessons taught, rituals practiced or experiences encountered with a world beyond this one.
The film is from queer Mexican-American director and writer Dawn Jones Redstone, who shot with us on the Chasing Grace Project. We decided to support this film project as part of our ELEVATE program, which includes financial and other forms of support for stories that elevate underrepresented voices, because childcare is too often left out of conversations about women and the workplace.
“If we want to tell our stories, we have to tell them ourselves,” Dawn says in the teaser for the film. When I asked her to elaborate, she said, “I have to fight to tell the stories I want to tell, and I try to bring people up with me and collaborate as much as I can to keep the stories authentic.”
Dawn is co-producing the film with Ana del Rocío, who inspired the storyline with her own life and is making her acting debut as the lead in the film. Ana has two sons and works as the executive director of Color PAC, which uplifts leaders of color to enter public office.
Once considered “girly issues,” childcare is finally gaining the attention it deserves in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic for being essential and shared infrastructure that supports our economy, our culture and our children’s futures.
“So much of the work to take care of a newborn or toddler is invisible,” says Ana. “The pandemic has really shown, via camera, for everyone to see how difficult it is to be productive and do the labor of caring for children. It has been historically devalued because it’s been feminized.”
Dawn Jones Redstone
Ana del Rocío
“I wanted to show that childcare is a shared problem, not an individual, private, shameful concern. It requires a collective shared solution.”
“I wanted to show that childcare is a shared problem, not an individual, private, shameful concern,” adds Ana. “It requires a collective shared solution.”
We’re also fascinated by the ways that ancestral trauma is passed through genes and wanted to learn more about how Dawn would capture that experience on film.
“When you start talking about this, I find a lot of people have had these experiences. I do think it’s about sensing something, rather than knowing or concretely seeing something,” says Dawn. “It’s something that is happening around us that not everyone is in tune to but if you talk a bit more, a lot of people have had this connection.”
“I’m interested in portraying the ancestors in a way that references our dreams,” she adds.
Dawn believes that narrative film can be used for discussion and change, and it’s clear that MOTHER OF COLOR is poised to inspire, disrupt and transform.
If you’re interested in supporting this project, you still can with its GoFundMe campaign. It will be shooting in Portland this summer. If you’d like to support legislation that drives equity for BIPOC storytellers, consider checking out DAMN - Disrupting American Media Now.