With just one week to go before A LOT LIKE YOU’s broadcast premiere, it’s getting pretty busy over here!!
We’re excited to be kicking off the fifth season of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange. With its focus on contemporary life, art, and pop culture across the African Diaspora, this documentary series is the perfect match for us!
We have press interviews lined up for this week. And AfroPoP’s been churning out their promo videos:
And then check this out! AfroPoP/Black Public Media produced this amazingALLY Discussion Guide to allow all audiences, both within and outside educational institutions, to carry out informed conversations about the issues addressed in our film.
On Tuesday, January 22, I will be joining co-hosts AfroPop and the Center for Asian American Media for an OVEE chat (online social screening) to engage directly with audience members nationwide and answer questions about our film journey. Here’s the link to join in the conversation: https://ovee.itvs.org/screenings/hb4uc. This online conversation will take place at 1pm PT/4pm ET.
A Lot Like You will premiere nationwide later that evening – Jan. 22 at 7pm ET (6pm CT/4pm PT). To find out if your local PBS station will be airing the show, click here.
And if your PBS station’s not listed, never fear! The AfroPoP series will release to more public television stations across the country in February.
Please join us for our screening of A LOT LIKE YOU on Jan 25 at 7pm. Discussion panel to follow, where I will be joined by LeiLani Nishime (Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Washington) and Wes Kim (Director of the Northwest Asian American Film Festival 2003–2007). Then the celebration continues at SAAFF’s opening night gala–all at the beautiful Wing Luke Museum!
Today, SAAFF’s gorgeous print program guide was published as an insert in the International Examiner! IE is distributed throughout the International District, South Seattle/Beacon Hill, Kent, Renton, Bellevue and Lynnwood.
The day after we arrived in Tanzania, the whole family descended on our house for Christmas dinner ~ 80 some relatives spanning 4 generations, playing, feasting, meeting and reconnecting. By the time evening came, there were about 30 remaining who wanted to see the film. So we got the room set up for what was to be our most intense screening yet.
Auntie Ndereriosa was there. Her estranged, abusive husband sat two seats away. My cousin Dalton (Awonyisa’s son), whom I hadn’t seen in years, was there with his wife and young girl. (This was Dalton’s 2nd time seeing the film. Read about his profound response to hearing his mother’s story for the first time HERE.) My cousins whom I had followed around with my camera nine years ago as they did their chores were all there.
I have always struggled when it comes to understanding the non-verbal cues of my Chagga family. So I knew sitting in the room with them while the film was playing would be too much for me. My parents and Tom remained for the screening, and afterwards they struggled to decipher the meaning behind the giggling whenever my Aunts’ spoke. And because of the language barrier, I knew much of the humor would be lost, as well as the weight of Mom and Dad’s conversation towards the end.
After the screening, I was curious to hear what my family thought of the film. My Aunt stood up to speak. Her thoughts echoed her sentiments in the film. Referring to her sister, she said, “There we were two. Now I am one.” She shared that she really wasn’t sure the day would ever come when she could finally unburden her heart and speak her truth. But telling her story liberated her from the heavy load she was carrying. And she was finally able to let it go.
Her statement was all the more profound given that she was standing only feet away from her husband. I was moved by her strength, and relieved that she felt that our film did her story justice. To receive her blessing for this film and the work it’s doing in the world was more than enough for me. Continue reading →
Gabourey Sidibe has a new gig: The Oscar-nominated actress will host a documentary series on public television starting next month.
The show is AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, a series of independent films showcasing contemporary life, art and pop culture in the African diaspora, as the many communities of African-origin people around the world are known.
This season of the series will focus on human and women’s rights struggles. The first film, Eliaichi Kimaro’s A Lot Like You, follows the half-Korean, half-Tanzanian sexual-abuse survivor as she explores her African roots and learns about the sexual violence faced by women in her family and community.
Sidibe, a Brooklyn native whose father is from Senegal in West Africa, will introduce each episode by adding her personal views about the issues portrayed, according to her publicity team.
“This season of AfroPoP helps give voice to those who truly need to be heard,” says Sidibe in a statement. “I’m happy to help bring these stories to the American public and raise awareness of issues of vital concern to women and men in Africa as well as all who care about human rights.”
Sidibe won acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for her powerful portrayal of Precious in the 2009 Lee Daniels film Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.She also appeared in Tower Heist opposite Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, and has two films coming out, including the indie drama Yelling to the Sky and the dark comedy Seven Psychopaths opposite Woody Harrelson.
The fifth season of AfroPoP, produced by Black Public Media, will premiere Jan. 22 on public television’s World Channel and will continue weekly through Feb. 5
A Lot Like You showed at the University where I teach last February.
Today [Dec] I spoke with a student who, without provocation, indicated that this movie changed her life.
That filmmaker showed me that you can touch on topics, through film, and make a real personal impact. You can talk about life and truth and pain in a way that creates space for social justice for real people. She is an inspiration and this film shows me how one story –just one–can build a bridge and change the world. Now I want to do that, too.
NAMSO is helping to connect our film with college/university audiences across the country…especially those students, alumni, activists, allies, academics who are passionate about the multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural student experience.
Thank you, NAMSO, for raising awareness about our film (see below) and for recommending A LOT LIKE YOU as a tool for deepening the conversation and exploration of the mixed experience. Look forward to seeing where our campus conversations take us!
The following write-up was sent out to their membership organizations:
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Film Rec: A Lot Like You
NAMSO was thrilled to catch Eliaichi Kimaro’s award-winning documentary, A Lot Like You, at the New York Asian American International Film Festival back in August, where it won the Audience Choice Award for Documentary Feature. Eli’s film was truly moving, and we were glad to connect with her at the screening.
A Lot Like You would be a fantastic film to screen on campus, as it reaches across many boundaries of personal narrative; identity; political, social, and gender issues; and cross-cultural and interracial experiences. If you’re interested in showing this film at your school, feel free to get in touch with us or reach out to Eli through her film’s Facebook or website.
We’re so honored that A LOT LIKE YOU has been selected to be the Opening night feature of the Seattle Asian American Film Festival!! Our film will be screening at the Wing Luke Museum on Friday, January 25 at 7pm, together with select shorts (Cinematropolis, Out, and Dol).
The discussion panel that follows will include Eli Kimaro (director of A LOT LIKE YOU), LeiLani Nishime (UW Assistant Professor of Communication, author of several published articles on mixed race representation), and Wes Kim (director of SAAFF’s predecessor, Northwest Asian American Film Festival 2003–2007).
Immediately after the panel discussion, we hope you will join us for the Opening Night Party, which will take place in the Wing Luke Reception room next to the Tateuchi Story Theater from 9:30-11:30pm.
Being a part of this amazing project for 7 years now, there are many topics that have made an impact on me. But the strongest is a heightened appreciation for the power of sharing one’s story.
I had the extreme good fortune of watching this process in action during the making of A Lot Like You. AND I’ve seen it continue countless times after screenings, during discussions with audience members, and in ongoing conversations with so many of you.
I am honored to be a part of providing a way to help continue this trend and conversation. I hope The ALLY Project facilitates the notion that everyone’s story is important, that everyone has the right to be heard, and once we do share, we discover similarities and increase our ability to respectfully coexist amidst diversity. From this place, we can rise together.
Eric Frith
Producer, Editor, Writer
A Lot Like You
Thank you, Julia Park, for this moving review of our screening at Vancouver Asian Film Festival this past weekend (and for the only shot I have of Lucy joining me for the post-screening Q&A).
I’m passing through a road I don’t know, looking out the smoky windows of the bus and trying to act like I don’t mind that a beet-red man is standing over my seat, huffing noisily as he tries to do something with his pants with his gnarled hands. I wonder if I should give him my seat. The map on my Galaxy 3 says we’re on Hastings Street, which is appropriate. I’m trying to get to the Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas, 88 West Pender St.
Travelling on Hastings is right. Except I’m seven bus stops ahead of the right one. I get off and cross the street.
Eventually I brave through the rain and confusion and end up inside an enormous building which not only holds this year’s Vancouver Asian Film Festival showings, but a plethora of ethnic stores. I’m late, so I bustle through without being able to linger and browse.
I speed through the doors and fumble through the darkness into a good enough seat at the last row of the theatre. I’m immediately swept into a story about an unfamiliar Tanzanian man.
“A Lot Like You” is a part-biographical documentary by Eliachi Kimaro, who is a mixed-race American with a Tanzanian father and a South Korean mother. The movie draws largely from personal interviews with her family members in Africa, and with her parents. Viewers are taken along the journey as they join Kimaro in her search for identity in adulthood as she herself finds herself in an interracial relationship, and uncover some heavy secrets along the way.
The intimacy and honesty of Eliachi Kimaro is what makes this film a real treasure. Continue reading →
found this note after putting lucy to bed. it was sitting on the kitchen table. this kid has clearly witnessed her mother weathering a relentless sea of rejection and disappointment getting this film funded, made and out into the world…(last word = “filmmaker”).
