Thursday, November 1, 2012

Multiracial People? Where are they in the media?


I grew up wondering why families on TV and in movies didn’t look like my family. My parents were different colors and depending on the time of year I either looked yellow like my mom or brown like my dad.  I was too young and didn’t have a way to describe what I was feeling at the time but I really wanted to see movies where people looked like me. We weren’t represented in the media.  This, along with spending countless hours watching Japanese and American movies with my maternal grandmother as a child, is what drove me into film school. I wanted to tell stories about mixed-people.

Let’s flash forward 9 years after film school, it is 2012 and I have yet to make a film about the “mixed experience.” I have a few ideas floating around in my head, but I lack the motivation to make my own movie. What I am passionate about, however, is helping other people tell their stories. This summer I had the privilege to work as an Associate Producer on the film The Opus 139 Project: To Hear The Music. I assisted the director, Dennis Lanson, in the beginning stages of a Kickstarter Campaign to finance post-production. While this film is not about multiracial identity, it is in fact about the C.B. Fisk Company and an organ they installed at Harvard Memorial Church, the experience showed me how wonderful it feels to help a filmmaker with their film.



This entire blog is about my desire, and hopefully, my experiences in helping filmmakers of mixed-race to get their films produced and distributed.  The pressure is on, especially because I have decided to create a blog on a topic that doesn’t really exist anywhere else.  Sure, there are blogs on multiracial identity, women in film, and even film distribution but I have yet to find anything the ties this all together.  I will attempt to bring you stories about multiracial films because I believe that people of mixed race are underrepresented in the media. Our stories are the stories of America, however cliché that may sound. We are a country of all races, ethnicities, and cultures but as a whole we seem to forget that.

I welcome any multiracial filmmaker or fan of a film about multiracial identity to contact me. I will be happy to showcase your films and stories on my blog. Perhaps even help you find distribution. Please feel free to contact me at Sharmane@knitvengeance.com.

Thank you for reading,

Sharmane Franklin Johnson

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