It was a pleasure to connect with Hannah Amante at our recent screening event at the University of Redlands, CA. Here is her write-up that appeared in the Redland City News.
Award-Winning Filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro Visits University of Redlands, Uses Film to Begin Discussion on Culture and Diversity
An activist for domestic violence issues, Eliaichi Kimaro had never seen herself as a filmmaker before. But having been born to a Tanzanian father from the Chagga tribe and a Korean mother, she began to contemplate how she would impart her cultural heritage to her future children.
“My path led me here kind of by accident,” she said, before screening her film on the night of Oct. 1 at the Orton Center at University of Redlands. The inspiration for her file came when she was driving in her car listening to music. She shared that one particular song stuck with her and planted an idea for a new artistic project. “I had a vision in my mind, of coming back to Tanzania and filming what my Chagga family and culture is all about, so that I could have some way of sharing that with my kid and making Chagga culture feel real and relevant to them,” she said. “At the time, I didn’t have any kids, but I was thinking ahead. And as that song was unfolding, visions of being back in Tanzania were playing back in my mind like an opening film montage.”
Despite the fact that Kimaro had never picked up a camera before, she signed up for classes and bought the necessary equipment on eBay. Seven months later, she and her partner resigned from their jobs and bought one-way tickets to Tanzania. They stayed for nine months, and a film was born, telling the story of Kimaro’s father’s side of the family, whom she interviewed extensively, and exploring topics such as gender violence, multicultural/multiracial issues, and cultural identity.
The resulting film, “A Lot Like You,” was released in 2011. Kimaro has been touring on the film festival circuit for a couple of years now, but is now working with a Seattle-based company that helps coordinate campus lecture circuits. “This film is really well-suited for schools,” said Kimaro. “I enjoy being able to connect with folks because the film brings up a lot for people and it brings up a lot of conversation—juicy conversation—and dialogue afterward, so whenever possible I like to show up together with my film to connect with people and see where that post-screening conversation takes us.”
Kimaro was introduced to last Tuesday’s audience by Leela MadhavaRau, the Associate Dean for Campus Diversity and Inclusion at University of Redlands. It had been MadhavaRau’s idea to bring her on campus. “I look to people who will generate conversations and from what I had heard particularly about this film, I thought that our students would respond to a film that looked to these questions like, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘How am I defined?’ and ‘Who defines me?’ and these bolder questions around culture.” Continue reading →
As our film makes its way onto the campus lecture circuit, I’m having more opportunities to step out from behind the film, and reflect on our 8-year journey from Worlds Apart to A Lot Like You.
These talks run parallel to the film and provide more context about the the story behind the story, while creating opportunities to engage meaningfully in discussions about gender, culture, race, identity, story, art and activism.
Upcoming Lecture dates:
October 14 @ 1pm: Lincoln Land Community College (Springfield, IL)
October 15 @ 6pm: DePaul University (Chicago, IL)
October 16 @ 1pm: DePaul University (Chicago, IL). ”Exploring Identity Through Story”
October 17 @ 7pm: Knox College (Galesburg, IL).
October 23 @ 12pm & 7pm: University of New England (Maine).
November 7 @ 6pm: University of Washington (graduate program in Communications)
Check out these beautiful promo materials for our DePaul Univ events–designed by DePaul student Mohammed Dardiri.
Eliaichi Kimaro
Cultural Café: A Lot Like You
Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 Cortelyou Commons, 2324 N Fremont St. 6:00pm-7:30pm
Join documentary filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro for a screening and discussion of scenes from A Lot Like You, her own original autobiographical journey of self-discovery. Her film follows her experience as a mixed-race, first-generation American reconciling the culture she’s inherited with how she defines herself today.
CULTURAL CAFÉ: EXPLORING IDENTITY THROUGH STORY
Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 Student Center 314AB, 2250 N. Sheffield Ave. 1:00pm-2:30pm
Focusing on the power of personal narrative, documentary filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro uncovers why it is critical that we find a way to share our stories with others. This workshop will explore our understanding of who we are, where we come from and where we belong.
We were so honored to be invited back by Vancouver Asian Film Festival for an encore screening of A Lot Like You–as a kick off event for 2013 VAFF. Our screening event was held at the beautiful Vancouver Public Library and was co-sponsored by community partners Hapa-palooza Festival and C3 Korean Canadian Society.
Reviewed by Jennifer Dean Graduate of the CUNY Graduate Center MALS program
with thesis on female filmmakers. Date Entered: 9/5/2013
In A Lot Like You director Eliaichi Kimaro travels to Tanzania to learn of her father’s roots and gain a better understanding of her own background. Kimaro, American daughter to a Korean mother and a Tanzanian father, tells a global story through her very personal journey back to a homeland her father left many years ago for a life in the United States. A Lot Like You manages to tell a universal story through its specificity without being limited to an individual experience as can often happen in stories of memoir and self-discovery.
Kimaro shares with the audience intimate details of her life and her relationship with her father but only those that flesh out the narrative and issues being explored. On the website for the film Kimaro writes, “the creative team for A Lot Like You discovered a surprising paradox: the more personal, honest and vulnerable we got in our storytelling, the more universal our story became.” She goes on to inform the reader that originally the documentary was narrated by both Kimaro and her father, muddying the story. With her single point of view expressed in the narration, multiple perspectives and global issues are raised. Continue reading →
We were invited to screen A Lot Like You at Venango College(9/16), and then to share stories/lessons learned over the course of our 8-year film journey…
A Lot Like You (2011) 2 discs. 80 min. DVD: $39.99 ($99 w/PPR): public libraries; $250 w/PPR: colleges & universities. Collective Eye (web: www.collectiveeye.org).
Filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro sets out to explore the cultural roots of her “blackness” in this powerful documentary. Her father, Sadikiel Kimaro, was a high-achieving student inTanzania, and later a political exile in the United States for 10 years, during which time he gained a college education and met and married a South Korean woman named Young, who was also the rebel in her traditional Asian family. Their 1970 wedding took place not long after the repeal of the last anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. The Kimaros went to work for the IMF and the World Bank, traveled the globe, and raised Eliaichi in an “American Dream” of affluence. The filmmaker (who is herself in an interracial marriage) journeys to the Mount Kilimanjaro region to unravel family history—looking into her father’s upbringing in the Chagga tribe, and speaking to aunts, uncles, and elders who remained behind in a nation that fast-forwarded from thatched huts to modernization. Quite unexpectedly, Kimaro also hits upon belated themes of repression and the abuse of women, an aspect that winds up hitting home in a very particular and painful way. Featuring both the full-length film and a 53-minute abridged “educational version,” extras include an audio commentary, an interview with Kimaro, and deleted scenes. Mixing the highly personal with the universal, this extraordinary family memory-album documentary is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)
So delighted to be the featured Filmmaker Interview this month on our educational distributor Collective Eye‘s blog! (I’ve reprinted the interview below, but original can be found here.)
What was the target audience that you were intentionally gearing the film towards when beginning production, and how has it changed? My original intent for A LOT LIKE YOU was to create a beautiful home video about Chagga culture to share with my (future) kids. As a first time filmmaker, I really had no expectations beyond that.
When we returned from Tanzania, we had 80 hours of footage. Once we found our editor, Eric Frith, our creative team grew from there. It didn’t take long for me to see that this project was on its own path, and wanted to be something much bigger than I had originally imagined.
Over the course of the next 8 years, we went through countless revisions, each one exploring our story through a slightly different lens. We ended up with a film that is ultimately about the lens we all bring to the story of our lives—the stories we inherit about who we are and where we come from; and how we filter the stories we pass down to the next generation, and why…
How would you explain your personal motivation for making this film? This project was born out of the slightly panicked realization that if my partner and I were to have kids, their understanding about what it means to be Korean or Tanzanian would have to come from me. The mere thought of that responsibility was terrifying. Because what did I know?!
Then driving to work one day, I was listening to a song that sparked a vision in which I could see the scenes of our opening travel montage unfolding. And I felt a tremendous sense of relief because I felt like I had finally figured out a way to preserve our cultural heritage and family stories—not only for our kids, but also for me. Never mind that I had zero filmmaking skills or equipment or know-how. I just signed up for Intro to Filmmaking classes at our local media arts center. And seven months later, my partner and I quit our jobs, bought our film equipment and one-way tickets to Tanzania. And we were off!
After production was complete, what were the first steps you took in order to begin getting the word out about the film? A LOT LIKE YOU premiered at the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival, and has been touring the festival circuit ever since (picking up awards long the way!) In 2012, we were invited to submit our film for PBS consideration. So we cut 30 minutes from our feature length film to get down to a broadcast hour. We had our PBS broadcast premiere in January 2013.
As I’ve been touring the campus/conference lecture circuit, I have found that being able to offer both versions of the film has been a tremendous advantage. Schools often use the festival cut (80min) at featured screening events, while the 50-minute cut is the version most often used in classrooms.
As an activist-turned-filmmaker, my goal for moving this film out into the world is to use A LOT LIKE YOU as a springboard for deepening discussions about the key issues raised. We have been partnering with activists, educators and non-profits who want to use this film to facilitate deep personal exploration and/or expand the national discourse around: – Race, Culture & Identity – Violence and Abuse – Intersectionality – Arts + Community Engagement
What were the biggest struggles you faced making this film? Continue reading →
Director Eliaichi Kimaro films women working in Chagga hut
Gone are the days of ad hoc screenings at the McDonald Theatre; film shorts and features from eight local and regional festivals, past and future, will stay the weekend at the new Bijou Metro during the Eugene Celebration’s “FilmZone.”
From sobering biopics to children’s animation, there’s something for everyone. Roll the dice with two “Secret Cinema” offerings or double down on a sure thing with works by Eliaichi Kimaro, Sándor Lau and E.C. (Ed) Schiessl.
Kimaro’s ALot Like You, winner of the Jason D. Mak AwardforSocial Justice at Eugene’s DisOrient Film Festival in April, traces her journey as an African-Asian-American, from vague notions of her lineage as a patriotic young American girl to living with her father’s Chagga tribe in Tanzania’s foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Kimaro’s playful delivery of an ethnographic study dovetails with a fervid, confounded introspection.
Probing the ancestral voice of her father’s upbringing, she finds a connection that soothes her identity while also calling back to her 12 years as a sexual assault counselor. Forced to brace for impact in a confrontation with misogyny, she learns the secrets of her aunts’ “culturally justified” abuse.
Dismantling issues of gender, race and class, Kimaro paves over her fantasies of yesteryear, building a new and lasting perspective. Questioning the global economic order and her family’s role in it, A Lot Like You also follows Kimaro’s father on a path away from Tanzania to pursue the American dream amid mismanaged crony socialism in the post-colonialist struggle of the Chagga (4:30 and 5:30 pm Aug. 24). Continue reading →
For 7 years, Mama Kimaro wrote a weekly column–“Development with Common Sense” for The Daily News, a national Tanzanian newspaper.
After taking some time off writing, Mom has resurfaced with another column…this time, a monthly column with the Korea Times! Here’s the link to her inaugural post, “From the Slopes of Kilimanjaro“.
And because I have internet trust issues, I’ve pasted the article below…
From the slopes of Kilimanjaro
By Younghoy Kim Kimaro
I am a Korean-born Tanzanian in her late 60s, living on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro with my husband, Dr. Sadikiel Kimaro. Growing up in Korea, I was totally addicted to a cartoon series, “The Jungle Prince,” a cartoon about a little African boy with bright round eyes and a headful of curly hair who always got tangled up in adventures.
If someone told me then that I would get tangled in my own adventures to end up living in Africa, I wouldn’t have believed it. Not in a thousand years. Yet, here I am, living out my life on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro and loving every moment of it. On a clear day if we are up early enough we can catch a glimpse of Kilimanjaro’s snow-capped peak from the veranda of our home. It has been a long and winding road from Seoul to Mt. Kilimanjaro.
My husband and I met at a graduate school in the U.S. He studied economics and I had my nose buried in books on African politics and African socialism then, though later I switched to economics.
After 30 years of working at the IMF (for him) and the World Bank (for me) and raising children in Washington, D.C., we retired from our jobs, packed up our bags, and returned to my husband’s home village in Mwika, on Mt. Kilimanjaro.
We’ve been back in Africa more than 10 years. Long enough for mountains and valleys to have changed? Long enough for one born and raised on the other side of the globe to become rooted and feel one with the people and the surroundings. And the longer I live in Africa, it strikes me how alike we are though at first we may seem so different. Continue reading →
We’re excited to announce that A Lot Like You will be screening on July 24 at 8:30pm at the Kigali Public Library. The festival theme this year is “Our Mothers, Our Heroes”…
And in a stroke of Uncanny coincidence, check out the name of the other film playing at the same venue on the same day…
For over 5 years, “Worlds Apart” was our working title. We considered 50 (!!) different titles before discovering our film’s name in Pete’s existing track, which became our title song…
Producer/Editor Eric Frith also edited Finding Hillywood which will be screening at RFF this year….
