"A Lot Like You" film is a lot like me

Talk about a coincidink! This documentary film by a Seattle-based woman with a Tanzanian father and Korean mother was playing at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival last week. So I loaded up about 10 Africans and their friends and checked it out. They kept leaning over and telling me, “This ‘A Lot Like You’ is a lot like you!” Indeed, with filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro‘s situating of her parents within African independence movements, it felt like a longer a version of My Journey Home. Perhaps even some of the same B&W Civil Rights footage appears.

But hers has an added surprise twist of domestic abuse. I was gratified that the African men in our group thought the film was fantastic. And they also noted that her parents were together – still – and make a lovely presence on screen. I’ve never seen my parents together. My favorite artistic bit happens around 0:26-0:28, where the filmmaker’s further mixed daughter staggers out of the grandparents’ traditional thatched hut, into a sunlight doorway, and disappears.

Afterwards, I introduced myself to Kimaro and told her my hope – that we could be a double feature at the Mixed Roots Fest this summer in Los Angeles. Wouldn’t that be cool?!

http://vimeo.com/alotlikeyoumovie/trailer

Filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro and her Tanzanian father and Korean mother