I wanted my crew to be a black people only filming crew or POC. Unfortunately in Paris that was almost impossible!
finding filming crew
and it was so ironic because it was literally what I wanted to argue in my dissertation. France is such a colourblind country that stating your blackness as part of your identity is like denying being french... so if you want to find french black creatives well you won’t. You can look everywhere, if your filter of search is « race or ethnicity » you won’t have any success.
So when I was posting on Facebook that I needed a black or POC DOP or black sound engineer, no response and I couldn’t count on french organisations !
Fortunately a friend of mine knew a friend of mine whose brother was a cinema student in Paris. He had his equipment. I was saved.
I asked my friends to help me as production assistants during pre-production (finding props,catering etc) and production (helping on the set, assistant director)
finding actors
finding actors was quite easier. I posted a post on Facebook, got many responses. Another friend of mine who is an actress recommended me 2 of her co-workers. We talked a bit on Instagram then face time. I really liked their facial expressions.
