mixed remixed Archives - Page 5 of 20 - Mixed Remixed Festival

My Journey to Mixed Remixed pt 4: Homeless Before Heidi

April 29, 2016 by admin

Neither fish nor fowl, exotic but slightly shy of ethnic, colorful but not quite white, multicultural by blood but acultural by practice, products of the global village but in a world all our own.

We are normal people who fall outside of the norm.

We are the fastest growing minority in the US–though I never knew that we were counted as a group.

We know how much #BlackLivesMatter. Our blood was spilled along with that of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, and Akai Gurley. We are equally outraged by the 300+ cases of black deaths at the hands of police in 2015, and by the fact that Peter Liang was a fall guy one of them. We are embarrassed by what Southwest Airlines did to Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, and our broken hearts go out to our 6th grade sister in the Bronx brutalized for wearing her hijab. We identify with everyone and no one at all.

We identify with everyone and no one at all. #mixedrace #multiracial

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We are mulatto, mestizo, and multiracial. We are Amerasian and Afroasian, hapa and hybrid. But all of the labels in the world cannot help us spot one another on a train platform or pick friendlies out of a white crowd. We bear no common marks, share neither fatherlands nor mother tongues. We cannot bond over our ethnic meals, euphorically dance to our ethnic music, dress in our traditional ethnic clothing to celebrate our ethnic holidays. We fall between the fibers of our cultural lexicon and of our social fabric.

But all of the labels in the world cannot help us spot one another. #mixedrace #multiracial

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We are mixed-race folk, and we were homeless before Heidi.

See you at Mixed Remixed this June.

-Michael Maliner, guest blogger

Michael Maliner is a writer and photographer who will be attending the Mixed Remixed Festival for the first time in June 2016. His blog, Tides ‘n’ Tudes, can be found here: www.tidesntudes.com. He will be blogging about our events throughout the the festival. If you want to attend, register here. It’s free!

My Journey to Mixed Remixed Part 3: Who am I?, A Mixed-Race Man’s Testimonial

April 27, 2016 by admin

Who am I?

Most people figure that out during their adolescence (at least according to behavioral psychologist Erik Erikson). If the question goes unanswered, however, one may experience “a general inability to find a meaningful place in one’s culture,” and ultimately, an identity crisis.

In law school I became friends with another hapa. We were astounded when we discovered that we shared the identical private and deep-seeded fear: being unemployable and homeless. He dropped out of law school after the first semester. I finished law school and practiced ever so briefly before moving onto another career (my third). A “sound ego identity” is a prerequisite to finding a sound and stable adult role (also Erikson).

As if my Filipino mother’s conversion to Judaism wasn’t absurd enough, my father staged my bar mitzvah when I turned 13. Fleetingly, I believed that I was a Jew, but that euphoric sense of belonging was short lived because, no matter how many times my father said “Jewish!” I just didn’t feel Jewish.

I never attended Hebrew school (as did most of my classmates). My bar mitzvah – for which I was technically ineligible because of my lack of schooling – was a sham service followed by a big party. Since I never learned to read Hebrew I could not read from the Torah, which to a practicing Jew made my bar mitzvah a bit like doing shots of Perrier in a distillery: going through the motions won’t earn you a stool at the whisky bar no matter how distended your bladder.

We were the only “Jewish” family in our very Jewish community who didn’t belong #mixedrace #multiracial

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We were the only “Jewish” family in our very Jewish community who didn’t belong to one of the many local temples. This had the effect of adding to the dreaded “What are you?” the even more dreaded “Well if you really are Jewish then what temple do you belong to?”

Clearly, we didn’t belong to a temple because we simply didn’t belong.

Like me, Erikson was an ambiguous Jew. He was the product of an extramarital affair and never knew his biological father (or, by extension, his biological identity). His given name was Erik Salomonsen, but he was renamed Erik Homburger after taking the name of his mother’s second husband. He was raised as a Jew, the very Nordic features he inherited from his absentee biological father notwithstanding. After being shunned by his Jewish peers for of being blond, and by his German peers for being Jewish, he converted to Christianity and changed his name to Erikson – a name of his own choosing.

Late in my life I am going to Mixed Remixed 2016 to begin to forge my identity. #mixedrace #multiracial

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Late in his life, he had forged his answer to “Who am I?” Like Erikson, late in my life I am going to Mixed Remixed 2016 to begin to forge mine.

-Michael Maliner, guest blogger

My Journey to Mixed Remixed Part 2: Religious Anatomy & Mixed Race Experience

April 24, 2016 by admin

My appearance is a rather off-putting enigma to those who like boxes with labels. I did not quite inherit the straight black hair or Malay features of my Filipino mother, nor did I inherit the slight figure or angular facial bones of my Eastern European Jewish father.

I’ve been mistaken for Italian, Middle Eastern, Eastern Indian, and every Spanish-speaking ethnicity on the planet. I am frequently addressed in Spanish on the streets of Manhattan, my English retorts met with surprise, if not suspicion. Once in my life – only once – was I asked if I was Filipino. Never has anyone asked me if I was white. But what I have been asked more times by more people than I can possibly remember is: “What are you?”

“Fit into a box with a label, or be wary.” #mixedrace #multiracial

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Neither fish nor fowl, mixed race folk are a threat to tidy mental categories. Fit into a box with a label, or be wary.

My father wanted us to be a white family and saw Judaism as the surest way of getting us there. My Asian mother was a genetic aesthetic barrier to this fantasy, at least until she converted to Judaism, which was a fantasy unto itself.

By Jewish lore, to be recognized as a Jew one must be born to a Jewish mother. My mother didn’t convert until my sister and I were three and six respectively. In fact we were present at the ceremony, which was held in the dark Brooklyn apartment of my grandparents’ rabbi.

“I struggled with this state of ethno-religious limbo . . .” #mixedrace #multiracial

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I’ll never know if that rabbi honestly believed that his ex-post-facto conversion of my mother made instant Jews of my sister and me, but by my reckoning the proverbial Jewish ship had already sailed. I struggled with this state of ethno-religious limbo until a dear friend of mine recently took pity and delivered me in a single sentence: “You didn’t come out of a Jewish vagina.”

Religious anatomy be damned, for after the night of the conversion, “Jewish!” is what my father answered whenever I asked “What am I?” And I did ask – often.

In retrospect, that is when I began my journey to Mixed Remixed.

-Michael Maliner, guest blogger

The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family, New Book by Biracial Author

April 22, 2016 by admin

We are incredibly excited that Festival Favorite Dmae Roberts new book about her mixed-race family and experience is out May 24!

The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family traces four decades of what it means to be a mixed-race adult who sometimes called herself “Secret Asian Woman.”

With her personal essays written over a ten-year period, Dmae Roberts journeys through biracial identity, Taiwan, sci-fi, and the trials of her interracial Taiwanese and Oklahoman family amid love, loss and letting go of past regrets and pain. Her reading and book signing events are scheduled as follows:

May 20th at 6:30pm (with introductions and opening remarks) at Woodrow Wilson High School (1151 SW Vermont St, Portland, OR 97219) along with a 7pm screening of Mei Mei, A Daughter’s Song, 2015 award-winning film for the Best Historical Documentary from the Oregon Independent Film Festival. m. Screening and reading 7:30-8pm, followed by a discussion.

May 23rd at 7:00pm at Broadway Books (1714 NE Broadway St, Portland, OR 97232) for the official launch of Roberts’ book.

(Cover art by Kathy Delumpa Allegri)

The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family will be available for purchase on May 24th on Amazon.com, Broadway Books, and Dmae Roberts’ website: www.dmaeroberts.com. There will also be Kindle edition soon to launch.

Praise for The Letting Go Trilogies:
“These bravely and beautifully written essays tell the story of an artist’s coming-of-age and a daughter coming to terms with her grief. This impassioned collection is all guts and heart and ultimately grace.”
Heidi W. Durrow, New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books)

“When you’re the living, breathing, confluence of two cultures, your search for self-identity is perpetual. These profound essays are a medley on what it’s like to live on that seismic fault line. This book spoke to my heart.”
Jamie Ford, New York Times best-selling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Songs of Willow Frost

“The magnet does not grow weary, and family ties still tug, even when we have to let go if we are to live our singular lives. Your own search for how to fi nd balance between family devotion and the oxygen required for independence will find insight in these essays by Dmae Roberts—essays born of long thinking by a gifted writer who has turned her power to document the lives of others to her own deep story.”
Kim Stafford, author of 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared (Trinity University Press)

The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family by a “Secret Asian Woman.” #multiracial #mixedrace

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About the Author, Dmae Roberts:
Dmae Roberts is a two-time Peabody winning radio producer/writer whose work often airs on NPR. Her Peabody award-winning documentaryMei Mei, a Daughter’s Song is a harrowing account of her mother’s childhood in Taiwan during WWII. She recently adapted this radio documentary into a film. She won a second Peabody-award for her eight-hour Crossing East, the first Asian American history series on public radio. She received the Dr. Suzanne Ahn Civil Rights and Social Justice award from the Asian American Journalists Association, a United States Artists (USA) Fellowship and an Oregon Book Award in 1996. Her essays have been published in Oregon Humanities Magazine, Reality Radio (UNC Press), Alexander Press and The Sun Magazine and Mothering in East Asian Communities book collection by Demeter Press. She is a regular columnist for the The Asian Reporter.

For more info email: lettinggotrilogies@gmail.com.

This book was made possible by a project grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Growing Up Mixed Race: My Journey to the Mixed Remixed Festival Part 1

April 17, 2016 by admin

Growing Up Mixed Race: My Journey to the Mixed Remixed Festival!

My introduction to racism came by way of the moniker “that little Mexican kid.” It all began with a girl that I had a huge crush on. Being the sentimental fool I was, I followed her around the schoolyard each day to make known the fact that she was the object of my affection.

Sadly, her take on my behavior was unflattering: she thought I was a friendless, cloying idiot with nothing to do but bother her. Truth told, she was right. I was an awkward 8 year-old whose social maturity was closer to age 6. I was also struggling with a crisis of identity that made interacting with others so disorienting that I altogether avoided the intimacy of friendship.

“That little Mexican kid!”

The moniker came about one day when, while literally following in my cherished one’s footsteps, a friend of hers spotted me and asked if I was “that little Mexican kid” she heard about. To this day, I remember the first and last names of both of those girls as well as the exact setting of this exchange. I also remember the way that girl said “Mexican” – in that tone that divides people into camps of “us” and “them,” and those two white girls were positively not in “Camp Mexican.” In short, I was the “them.”

I didn’t think of the comment as racist, and perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it was racist but I took no offense because I am not Mexican. Or perhaps, because I am mixed race, I lacked the ethnic allegiance prerequisite to being vulnerable to racial epithet. (Ever wonder why white people are not as easily offended by racial slurs as the rest of us? But that’s a topic for another time.)

The moniker stuck – for years. It faded for a while around the 4th grade then came back with a vengeance in middle school when, coincidentally, I excelled in Spanish class. And this time the intent of the slur was crystal: “We don’t know what you are, but we do know what you are not: white. And that’s all we need to know to make it okay for us to abuse you.”

“We don’t know what you are, but we do know what you are not: white.” #multiracial #mixedrace

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I knew I was different, but I was perplexed by the racist tenor of the incessant jeers. After all, my father is white. We lived in a white neighborhood (very, very white at the time) under the same roof as my white grandparents. Wasn’t that white enough to make me white? Then there was my mother, the eldest of ten children, two of whom emigrated from the Philippines to make their homes in the US. Did that make me Filipino? And did that also mean that I was Asian? In my mind the Chinese, Japanese and Korean were Asian, but I didn’t look like them nor did I feel like I belonged among them. And being only half Filipino, did I even qualify as an Asian?

What are you? A dreaded question for mixed race folk.

“What are you?” is a dreaded question for mixed race folk. We are neither fish nor foul, exotic but slightly shy of ethnic, colorful but not quite white, multicultural by blood but acultural by practice, products of the global village but in a world all our own.

I’m “lucky” because I can pass. I’m not too brown, and I inherited more of my mother’s Spanish features than Malay. On the outside I am the stuff of Horatio Alger, an upstanding citizen of white corporate America – I have a wife, two kids, a one-car garage overflowing with suburban detritus – living on the razor’s edge of mortgage payments and college savings.

So why is someone like me going to the Mixed Remixed Festival?

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Because a life of passing takes a toll on you.

Because once you perfect playing the character you created to insulate yourself against questions like “What are you?” you begin to forget that you’re playing a character at all.

Because I have to believe that the identity crisis that has muddied my sense of self, made me a perpetual outsider and influenced every important decision that I have ever made is not uniquely mine – that other mixed race folk have similar stories. I want to find them so that I can find myself.

-Michael Maliner, guest blogger

Michael Maliner is a writer and photographer who will be attending the Mixed Remixed Festival for the first time in June 2016. His blog, Tides ‘n’ Tudes, can be found here:http://bit.ly/tides_n_tudes. He will be blogging about our events throughout the the festival. If you want to attend, register here. It’s free!

Storytelling: Art & Activism Unite (Workshop) Mixed Race People Telling Stories & Creating Community

April 9, 2016 by admin

Storytelling: Art & Activism Unite as Mixed Race People Tell Stories & Create Community

June 11, 2016 11:00am-12:20pm

As mixed race people, we have many stories to tell. Interactive workshop 6/11 #mixedrace #multiracial

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Storytelling is a powerful, historical, cultural practice that has the ability to create social change. As mixed race people, we have many stories to tell as we build within and between our various communities. This workshop is designed to engage us in sharing our stories in order to build accountability, interrupt oppression, address anti-blackness, create spaces for healing and lift up strategies to strengthen communities. We are excited to engage with storytellers, writers and artists who are committed to social justice and racial equity.

REGISTER HERE!

Amity Paye works in communications at a labor union and has written for various outlets including The Nation, NBC, The Root, The Amsterdam News and more. She is also the Communications Co-Chair of the NYC Chapter of the Black Youth Project 100 and does supportive communications work for various Black Lives Matter groups.Rachael Ibrahim, MSW; a passionate community organizer, trainer, and artist. Her work is rooted in a structural racial equity framework, the impact of intersecting oppressions, and her experience as a black mixed-race woman from the Midwest. She centers accountable relationships in movement building to create transformation.

Rachael Ibrahim, MSW; a passionate community organizer, trainer, and artist. Her work is rooted in a structural racial equity framework, the impact of intersecting oppressions, and her experience as a black mixed-race woman from the Midwest. She centers accountable relationships in movement building to create transformation.

Multiracial Writers Featured Reading at Mixed Remixed Festival!

April 9, 2016 by admin

Multiracial Writers Featured at Mixed Remixed Festival 2016

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm

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F. Douglas Brown is the author of Zero to Three (University of Georgia Press 2014), recipient of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He also co-authored with poet Geffrey Davis, Begotten (November 2016), a forthcoming chapbook of poetry from Upper Rubber Boot Books as part of URB’s Floodgate Poetry series. Mr. Brown, teaches English at Loyola High School of Los Angeles, and is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow. When he is not teaching, writing or with his two children, Isaiah and Olivia, he is busy DJing in the greater Los Angeles area.

Natashia Deón is a Los Angeles attorney, writer, and law professor. Her debut novel, GRACE is due out June 2016 with Counterpoint Press. She is the creator of the reading series Dirty Laundry Lit and a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Rattling Wall, The Rumpus, B O D Y, The Feminist Wire, and other places.

Author Jamie Ford reading from his latest book, Songs Willow Frost, at the Wing Luke Museum.

Jamie Ford is the great grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 34 languages. His new novel, Songs of Willow Frost is available now.

Willy Wilkinson, MPH is an award-winning writer, public health consultant, cultural competency trainer, public speaker, and spoken word performer. He is the author of the Lambda Literary Award Finalist Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency, which illuminates trans experience from a Chinese American and mixed perspective, and transforms the memoir genre into a cultural competency tool. Willy has provided LGBTQ and trans-specific training for hundreds of community health organizations, educational institutions, and businesses. Learn more at here.

Called “fast-paced and unflinching” by The New Yorker, and “a genuine tour-de-force” by The Seattle Times, Sunil Yapa’s debut novel Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist was named an Amazon Spotlight selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover selection, and an Indies Next Pick. Yapa’s father is from Sri Lanka, his mother is from Montana. Sunil has lived around the world, including time living in Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, and India.

Short Film Screenings Program 2: Multiracial & Mixed Race Filmmakers Q&A

April 9, 2016 by admin

Multiracial & Mixed Race Filmmakers Q&A

June 11, 2016 12:00pm-12:50pm with filmmaker Q&A

#Multiracial -Race Filmmakers Q&A & Short Film Screenings 6/11

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REGISTER HERE!

Almost Asian: Group Therapy

dir. Chris McPherson Producer/Actor/Writer:Katie Malia

Running Time: 2:10 minutes

Katie Malia is an “ethnically-ambiguous” actress and writer in Los Angeles. Having appeared in 100+ national commercials and print campaigns with acclaimed directors Mike Mills, Marc Forster and more, Katie has been featured on TV and recently guest starred on FOX’s Sleepy Hollow. Katie studied at Columbia University in New York and recently was a performer and writer in the 2016 CBS Diversity Comedy Showcase. Oh yeah, and she hates the term “ethnically-ambiguous.”

Kim Loo Sisters

dir. Leslie Li

Running Time: 8:07 minutes

An intimate, warm-hearted story about four biracial sisters who broke through the ‘bamboo ceiling’ of American mainstream entertainment to become the first Asian American act to star in Broadway musical revues. They shared top billing with Frank Sinatra, The Three Stooges, Jackie Gleason and Ann Miller. They are also my mother and my three maternal aunts.

The Kimmies, as they were called, cut their theatrical teeth in kiddie revues in their hometown of Minneapolis, MN, graduated to a family act on vaudeville circuits across the country, and landed on the Broadway stage and Hollywood screen as a jazz vocal quartet who specialized in swing music. When one of the sisters left the act to marry the son of the vice president of Nationalist China and witnessed the Chinese Civil War of 1945-1949 first-hand, her three siblings carried on as the three Kim Loo Sisters — “the Chinese Andrews Sisters — and joined the USO to perform for American and Allied troops stationed in Europe during the Second World War.

Leslie Li is the director of the feature-length documentary — The Kim Loo Sisters — about a jazz vocal quartet popular in the 1930s and 40s who became the first Asian American act to star in Broadway musical revues. The “Kimmies” as the sisters were called are her mother and her three maternal aunts. Leslie is also the author of Bittersweet: A Novel (Tuttle Publishing); Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes (Arcade Publishing); and Just Us Girls: The Companion Book to The Kim Loo Sisters (Four Seasons Press).

Maya Osborne: Confessions of a Quadroon

dir. Barry Mayo

Running Time: 12:21 minutes

Maya Osborne: Confessions of a Quadroon is a 12-minute documentary short about 20-year old mixed-race Bard student/ spoken word artist Maya Osborne. The film is centered around a slam poetry performance of her most noted poem at the NuYoRican Poets cafe in NYC. This piece features Maya’s first person account of her struggles with her biracial identity, along with both her mother and father’s personal perspectives. They are separated.

Former radio broadcasting veteran, Barry Mayo is a photographer/documentarian whose work primarily addresses issues of race in both still photography and film. In addition to the photographic documentation of his travels, Mayo spent a year at the International Center of Photography where he focused his work on the offspring of mixed raced unions. He’ll be starting principal photography on his next project in April, looking at the subjects of both transgender and mixed race identity.

Our Mixed Voices: Sharing Our Stories (An Interactive Workshop to Talk About Multiracial and Mixed-Race Individual Stories)

April 9, 2016 by admin

Our Mixed Voices: Sharing Our Stories

June 10, 2016 10:00am-11:20am

June 11, 2016 9:30am-10:50am

REGISTER HERE!

Come and share your mixed experience. Experience the healing that comes with sharing in a circle with people who can truly relate. Learn how to use an innovative conversational method to lead groups of your own. In an optional follow-up session, take a writing/storytelling workshop that will give you additional tools to creatively share your experience with the world. The session uses Dialogue Circle technology, a method of having productive conversations about difficult subjects, especially about difference.

Our Mixed Voices: Sharing Our Stories (Interactive Workshop abt #Multiracial #mixedrace

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Angelo John Lewis is the co-founder of the Diversity and Spirituality Network, creator of the Dialogue Circle method, and author of Notes for New Age and a writer, life coach and consultant.

Zachary Green is a professor of practice in Leadership Studies at the University of Maryland. He consults internationally on deeper dimensions of issues related to identity, organizational effectiveness, and adaptive change. A leadership coach for the World Bank for 15 years, Dr. Green also designs training and development for disenfranchised communities in urban settings.

Anthony J. Patterson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Certified Rehabilitation Counselor & a highly skilled and results-oriented cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist. For more than 20 years he has provided outstanding therapeutic services to persons dealing with depression; anxiety; addiction, managing loss; trauma; transitions; difficulties with relationships (partners; friends co-workers etc.) to persons from various communities. He specializes in couples; individual, couple and group therapy and believes through the power of reflection and insight, turning life’s challenges and difficulties into one’s greatest strengths and assets.

Roxanne Kymaani, Ph.D. Primary research interests include: liminality, third space and hybrid identity construction, group dynamics and cultural construction, and leading dialogues. She is a Life Coach based in San Diego, California, and also currently serves as the Executive Director for the National University’s Division of Extended Learning and Certified Core Adjunct Faculty for the Organizational Leadership graduate program, and an Adjunct Lecturer with Goucher College’s Cultural Sustainability graduate program. Roxanne received her doctorate in Leadership Studies from the University of San Diego, dissertation titled, “Beyond biracial: The complexity of identity construction for women with one black and one white parent”.

Cindy Franklin is an Executive Coach and consultant living in the Bay Area, and one of the co-founders of the Diversity and Spirituality Network. The years she spent earlier in life studying meditation in India, and subsequent ongoing practice, continue to deeply inform her life and work.

Short Film Screenings Program 3: Multiracial and Mixed Race Filmmakers Q&A

April 9, 2016 by admin

Short Film Programs 3: Multiracial and Mixed-Race Filmmakers Q&A

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm with filmmaker Q&A

#Multiracial & #Mixed-Race Films with Q&A 6/11 FREE!

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REGISTER HERE!

Good Luck Soup

dir. Matthew Hashiguchi

Running Time: 10 minutes

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm with filmmaker Q&A

After years of rejecting his Asian American identity, a grandson attempts to reconnect with his culture through the customs and traditions of his grandmother.

Matthew Hashiguchi is an Assistant Professor in Multimedia Film & Production at Georgia Southern University and a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on the diverse cultural, social and ethnic stories of American society. In May 2013, his short documentary film, People Aren’t All Bad, screened at the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival and was also a finalist for Smithsonian Magazine’s 2014 In Motion Video Contest. Another film, The Lower 9, received a grant and Second Place Gold Circle Award from The Caucus for Producers, Writers and Directors Foundation and an award for Best Short Documentary at the Spring 2012 Asians on Film Festival.

Matthew recently completed Good Luck Soup, a transmedia documentary project on the relocation and assimilation of Japanese Americans after leaving the internment camps that is told through both a feature-length film and a web-based, interactive documentary.

Invisible Roots: Afro-Mexicans in Southern California

dirs. Tiffany Walton, Lizz Mullis

Running Time: 21 minutes

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm with filmmaker Q&A

Mexico is home to many African-descended peoples who have now immigrated to Southern California. Through intimate portraits, members of three Afro-Mexican families discuss what it means to be Mexican with African roots, roots that are often forgotten, denied and frequently despised.

Lizz is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California and is pursuing a career in film, television, and communication. Influenced by her experience as a photographer and editor, Lizz has ventured into creating both fiction and non-fiction film narratives. Her ultimate goals are to create content that challenges viewers’ thought processes and invites social change.

Tiffany Walton is a Los Angeles-based independent filmmaker. As a writer and producer, Tiffany creates content for the lifestyle site, SkinGab. She is a recent graduate of USC’s Annenberg Graduate School of Journalism. Tiffany first became familiar with Afro-Mexicans after seeing Tony Gleaton’s photography of the African presence in Mexico, while she was a teen. Later, she read an article in the LA Times, by John Mitchell, about Afro-Mexicans living in Southern California and wanted to learn more about their stories.

Japandering: Cosplay Cafe

dirs. Anna Suzuki & Omar Shaukat

Running Time: 8 minutes

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm with filmmaker Q&A

A dark comedy about a Japanese-American woman, Anna, who lives in Brooklyn with her Japanese mom and Jewish dad. In her 20s, she visits Tokyo for the first time to confront the burden of being biracial, feeling like an outsider in her own culture, and connect with her Japanese roots.The series was shot on location in Tokyo with a local crew.

Anna Suzuki is a NYC-based comedian, actor, and writer. Credits include Orange is the New Black, High Maintenance (HBO), I am Michael (with James Franco, Zachary Quinto). Currently Anna is part of the all-Asian sketch team, Azn Pop, and co-host of the variety show/podcast, The Soul Glo Project. Anna co-created the dark comedy series, Japandering, based on her experience growing up biracial in Japan. More at japandering.com, helloannasuzuki.com

Omar Shaukat is a Pakistani-American stand-up comedian now living in Brooklyn, New York. He has appeared on season 3 of Comedy Central’s “Broad City”. Omar has opened for Ron Funches on the road and performed at the New York Comedy Festival. He is the co-creator alongside Anna Suzuki of the comedic webseries Japandering.

Crazy Mixed Up World

dir. Carolyn Battle-Cochrane

Running Time 15 minutes

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm with filmmaker Q&A

New York born Carolyn Battle-Cochrane, writer, producer and director, is best known for her critically acclaimed documentary series “Biracial Not Black Damn It!” featured on CNN and other national/international media outlets. Battle-Cochrane is currently in post production on two feature length documentaries. “Unconscious Bias – Unarmed (Jon & Cache), an intimate back-story to a headline news tragedy and “Crazy, Mixed-Up World”, a discussion about identity and race post Obama administration.

Evoking the Mulatto: It’s Not a Cool Word [Episode One]

dir. Lindsay Harris

Running Time: 7:08 minutes

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm with filmmaker Q&A

Created by Lindsay C. Harris, Evoking the Mulatto is a transmedia project exploring black mixed identity in the 21st century, through the lens of the history of racial classification in the United States. Featuring filmed interviews with young artists and activists, photographic portraits, and historical mappings, this web-based interactive video art project seeks to address a relevant contemporary issue by glimpsing at its chronicle.

Lindsay Catherine Harris is a Brooklyn-based media maker, activist, and educator. Originally from the Southwest, Lindsay works to create multimedia projects exploring identity, presence, and history. She has also designed and taught programs in new media, digital storytelling, art, and social justice to young people at museums and community-based orgs around NYC, currently expanding youth programs at the Brooklyn Museum. She holds a B.A. in Africana Studies & Art from Vassar College and M.A. in Arts Politics from NYU. She has received the Flaherty Film Seminar Fellowship and Black Public Media Digital Arts Fellowship. She is also one of the 2016 Laundromat Project Create Change Fellows.

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We are incredibly excited that Festival Favorite Dmae Roberts new book about her mixed-race family and experience is out May 24!

Growing Up Mixed Race: My Journey to the Mixed Remixed Festival!

“That little Mexican kid!”

What are you? A dreaded question for mixed race folk.

Storytelling: Art & Activism Unite as Mixed Race People Tell Stories & Create Community

Multiracial Writers Featured at Mixed Remixed Festival 2016

Multiracial & Mixed Race Filmmakers Q&A

Short Film Programs 3: Multiracial and Mixed-Race Filmmakers Q&A

June 11, 2016 2:30pm-4:00pm with filmmaker Q&A

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