E Minha Cara/That’s My Face

E Minha Cara/That’s My Face is a mythopoetic odyssey exploring identity and spirituality across three generations of an African-American family. USA, East Africa and Brazil.

Shari Frilot, Programmer, 2002 Sundance Film Festival:

Astoundingly beautiful and epic in scope, That’s My Face (é minha cara) is a personal documentary offering an entire generation of African Americans a groundbreaking perspective on the maddening diasporic search for a mythic motherland. In healing his own cultural yearnings, director Thomas Allen Harris journeys beyond the political movements of his day and into a spiritual realm where he finds much more then he expects.

His grandparents’ African Methodist-Episcopal church taught Thomas as a child that Africa was a place that could only be saved by Christian missionaries. But his rebellious mother was part of the 1970s’ movement that regarded Africa as home “because we knew America didn’t want us” and migrated the family to Tanzania, East Africa. When they arrived in the modern city of Dar-es-Saalam, Africa seemed more like Miami than the motherland they imagined.

Thomas learned to love Africa for what it was, but when he returned to the Bronx, he was unable to express his newfound identity. Even his African Methodist-Episcopalian faith failed to provide him comfort until he learned from an Afro-Brazilian friend that beneath the patina of conventional Christian iconography is a rich double life of African ancestral spirit worship. Like his mother, Thomas embarks on a migration across the ocean, this time to Brazil, in an effort to find a sense of home and belonging. Shot entirely on Super-8 film and employing an innovative sound design that uses rap and hip-hop multivoice sampling, That’s My Face is as much an artistic gem as a spiritual gift.

PRESS
“A visually gorgeous melding of poetry and politics.” -Ernest Hardy, LA Weekly

“The impressionist beauty of Harris’s Super-8 footage should give pause to anyone continuing to shoot their documentaries on digital video.” – Anthony Kaufman, The Village Voice

“Mesmerizing documentary…” – Ronnie Scheib, Variety

“The impressionist beauty of Harris’s Super–8 footage should give pause to anyone continuing to shoot their documentaries on digital video.”—The Village Voice

Still from Super8 image shot by my Grandfather in the 60’s off the television screen

AWARDS
– 2001 Toronto International Film Festival – World Premiere

– International Filmmaker Award -Toronto Reel Black Awards 2002

– Gordon Parks Award Finalist -Independent Feature Project Market 2001

– 2002 Sundance International Film Festival – USA Premiere

– 2002 Berlin International Film Festival – Prize of the Churches of the Ecumenical Jury

– 2002 Tribeca Film Festival – New York Premiere

– 2002 Denver Pan-African Film Festival – Best Documentary

– 2002 San Francisco Black Film Festival – Best Documentary

Purchase “E Minha Cara/That’s My Face” DVD

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Mining the Family Photo Archive - January 26, 2011

    […] parenting and death. This film was the first of the the “Paulding Avenue Trilogy” – including E Minha Cara/That’s My Face (2001) and Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela (2005) – a series that documents life growing up in […]

  2. “Civil Rights & Cinema” Live web chat with Yoruba Richen & Thomas Allen Harris - June 20, 2012

    […] (left) – whose past films include, Vintage Families of Value, E Minha Cara, and Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela – is currently working on his fourth feature […]

  3. “Collaborating with Composers” workshop @ CBGB Film Festival - July 2, 2012

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  4. Thomas Allen Harris Discusses Visual Story-Telling @ the Schomburg Center - August 23, 2012

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  5. Dr. Mary M. Marshalls Shares her appreciate for DDFR - September 6, 2012

    […] history, to the wonderfully exciting excerpts from “Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela” and “E Minha Cara/That’s My Face”, to excerpts from the work of other photographers who have and continue to document OUR […]

  6. Chimpanzee Productions Seeks Interns - September 12, 2012

    […] directed by award winning filmmaker, Thomas Allen Harris (Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, E Minha Cara/That’s My Face, Vintage Families of Value), founder and president of the Harlem based Film, Television, and […]

  7. Harris’ Filmmaker Workshop – Tribeca Film Institute @ The New School Workshop - September 19, 2012

    […] portfolio including excerpts from his films “Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela” and “E Minha Cara/That’s My Face”, clips from the PBS documentary “Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence […]

  8. Thomas Allen Harris Featured in The Advocate.com - September 18, 2013

    […] hooked on solar energy to a profile on the queen of Calypso music. Sunday’s episodic film, That’s My Face, is directed by Thomas Allen Harris, a prolific gay artist and producer who’s shown work at […]

  9. THROUGH A LENS DARKLY to Premiere at Sundance Film Festival – New Frontier! - January 14, 2014

    […] will be Thomas Allen Harris’ second feature-length documentary(É Minha Cara/That’s My Face 2002) to make its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The highly accomplished director has been […]

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