MIXED, Documentary Film on Mixed Race Families
Film screening May 24 at Mary C. Jenkins Center
MIXED, a documentary film on interracial families, will be screened at Mary C. Jenkins Center on Wednesday, May 24th . The show is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served at 6:00 pm, and the 60-minute screening will begin at 7:00, followed by a Q & A with the filmmaker.
Fifty years after the landmark Loving v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court case ended legal persecution of interracial marriage in American, two mothers – one brown, one white – set off on a journey to explore what it meant to be a bi-racial child living in today’s America. MIXED focuses on the perspectives of mixed-race families, and America’s deep cultural ambivalence about its rapidly changing mixed-race reality. MIXED offers a new lens into race and the lives of the first generation of mixed-race kids and families to be counted in the U.S. Census.
Despite the increase of mixed-race families, they still face questions of inclusion and misunderstanding. The film’s directors, mothers of mixed-race children, are confronted with questions like: Are you the nanny? What is she? Did you adopt those children? Where did they come from? The children are often forced to identify one racial group in order to fit in, and to explain “what they are”. How do we explain the sociopolitical construction of race to a child who identifies as more than one?
Filmmaker Leena Jayaswal is Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC. Her award-winning photography has been shown in museums and galleries across the country. Her film “Crossing Lines” has been broadcast on over 100 PBS stations across the country.
The Mary C. Jenkins Community and Cultural Center is located at 221 Mills Avenue in Brevard’s Rosenwald community. A free parking lot is across from the Center on Cashiers Valley Road.
[MIXED documentary is a presentation of the Center for Asian American Media with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.]
Website: https://www.mixeddocumentary.com/