None of the AbovePosted in Asian Diaspora, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States, Videos on 2012-03-05 21:44Z by Steven |
Filmakers Library (an imprint of Alexander Street Press)
1994
23 minutes
Erika Surat Andersen
University of Southern California
None of the Above is a documentary about people of mixed racial heritage based on the filmmaker’s own search for identity and community. Ms. Andersen, whose mother is (Asian) Indian and father is Danish American, explores her “own personal hangup” by finding others in the same ambiguous category. Through her journey into the multiracial world we are given an inside view of the emotional reality of what it’s like to be racially unclassifiable in a society obsessed with race.
During the course of the film we meet Leslie, a young woman of Native American, African, and European ancestry; Curtiss, whose mother is Japanese and father is African-American; and Henrietta, whose family has been mixed for at least six generations and defies all categorization. The intimacy of the interviews and the filmmaker’s openness about her own experience make this film emotionally compelling and particularly relevant in today’s multicultural society.