Segregated by Design
An animated glimpse into a crucial part of history
Words by Sam Lauron Photos by Eric Morales
One local artist, Mark Lopez of Silkworm Studio, is on a mission to bring more awareness to the history behind segregation through his motion design short film.
A native Austinite, Mark Lopez, began his motion design career in New York City. Motion design, as Mark puts it, is the creation of animated graphics for anything from films to commercials to brand videos. “It’s a lot of different things, especially now that screens are everywhere,” he explains.
After several years of working alongside some of the most talented designers in the industry, Mark and his wife decided to make the move back to Austin to raise their family. Once here, he continued to freelance for motion studios in New York and LA, eventually founding his own studio, Silkworm Studio.
In 2017, he decided to embark on a personal film project, something he didn’t feel he had the opportunity to do until moving to Austin. Mark initially thought he would make a short film about the history of racism in America, “starting from Native Americans to slavery and all the way to the housing crisis,” he describes. During his research, however, he stumbled upon an NPR interview with Richard Rothstein, author of the book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America. While listening to the author speak about segregation policies created by the government, Mark immediately began “imagining all the things he was saying in my head and how they would be visually represented.” Struck by what he heard, he knew that this topic had to be the subject of his film. Mark reached out to see if Richard would be open to working with him on the film, and to Mark’s surprise, the author agreed.
Based on the 250-page book and narrated by Richard himself, Segregated by Design uses animations to visually represent the history of residential segregation in America that began in the 1920s. The seventeen-minute film specifically shines a light on how the government discriminated against African-American families and used unconstitutional laws and policies to segregate every major metropolitan area in the country, Austin included.
The project not only made an impact on Mark’s motion design career—the film was longer than anything he had done before and took him 15 months to direct, design, and produce—but also impacted his awareness and perspective on America’s history. He hopes that by watching the film, others will be informed the same way. “If people understand the history,” he says, “then hopefully that will cause us to act.”
Mark also believes that because his medium appeals to a younger audience, the film can spur change in a more impressionable demographic: students. He wants to encourage school boards to include this critical part of history in their curriculum.
“I feel confident that if I can [screen] the film in schools,” says Mark, “then kids will learn about this and the next generation could eventually change what’s been done.”
Attend the Screening:
Silkworm Studio will be screening Segregated by Design on March 5 at the For the City Center on St. John’s Ave. Following the screening, there will be a Q&A with The Color of Law author Richard Rothstein and filmmaker Mark Lopez, moderated by Dr. Richard J Reddick. The event is free to attend, but donations are welcome.
