 |
| Mixing Nia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Alison Swan |
| Written by | Alison Swan |
| Starring | Karyn Parsons Isaiah Washington Eric Thal Diego Serrano |
| Distributed by | Arrowhead Pictures Caminer-Gallagher Productions Third Man Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 92 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Mixing Nia is 1998 dramedy film by director Alison Swan. The film stars actress Karyn Parsons, as Nia, a biracial woman on a journey to find her true identity.
The movie begins with Nia (Parsons), an upwardly mobile biracial woman working for an advertising firm in New York City. When Nia and her co-worker at the firm, Matt (Thal) are put in charge of marketing a malt-liquor beverage to African-American teens, Nia quits her job. She decides to pursue her dream of writing a novel. She hopes to write about her Jewish father and African American mother meeting and living in Greenwich Village in the 1960s. In doing research and beginning her novel, Nia goes on an unexpected journey into her personal identity.
Though her circle of friends is of all races, she has spent most of her life identifying with the Jewish side of her culture, and is a self-proclaimed yuppie. She hopes to identify more with the African-American side of her heritage, and find an authentic black experience. Her first attempt at this is in enrolling in an African-American writing workshop. In this class she meets and falls for the instructor, Lewis (Washington). At the same time, she goes out with her former co-Worker Matt for drinks, and finds that he has had a long time attraction to her as well. Nia pursues both of these relationships, with each man exploring a different side of her identity. She begins to learn that the two sides of her identity clash, and that she can't even be "too much" of either race. She is at times too white for Lewis, who comments that maybe he should find a "real black woman", and leave Nia. She also at times feels out of place with Matt, feeling she does not fit in with his friends, and in some instances even feels isolated by their opinions and racial remarks.
Everything comes to a head when Nia invites both men to a wedding in which she is a bridesmaid. She is forced to make a decision between the two, but ultimately decides on being alone. She returns home, hoping to speak with her downstairs neighbor Joe (Serrano), a musician. During the whole movie she has had a fleeting flirty relationship with him, free of discussion of her race, and more about finding who she is as a person. She looks for him as her last person to turn to, but finds that he is gone, and has subleased his apartment for 6 months. Joe left a gift for her, a guitar, which inspires her to continue her novel, which she had given up on.
The movie ends with Nia, now reading a poem to the same audience that at one time she had been "too white" for, and Joe clapping for her in the audience.
This film was shown at the 1998 New York Women's Film Festival.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, and Hurston's best known work. The novel explores main character Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny".
The Bourne Supremacy is a 2004 action-thriller film featuring Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne character. Although it takes the name of the second Bourne novel (1986), its plot is entirely different. The film was directed by Paul Greengrass from a screenplay by Tony Gilroy. It is the second installment in the Jason Bourne film series. It is preceded by The Bourne Identity (2002) and followed by The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Bourne Legacy (2012), and Jason Bourne (2016).
Jason Bourne is the title character and the protagonist in a series of novels and subsequent film adaptations. The character was created by novelist Robert Ludlum. He first appeared in the novel The Bourne Identity (1980), which was adapted for television in 1988. The novel was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 2002 and starred Matt Damon in the lead role.
Rose Madder is a horror/fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1995. It deals with the effects of domestic violence and, unusually for a King novel, relies for its fantastic element on Greek mythology. In his memoir, On Writing, King states that Rose Madder and Insomnia are "stiff, trying-too-hard novels."
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey is a 1993 American adventure comedy film and a remake of the 1963 film The Incredible Journey, which was based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Sheila Burnford. Directed by Duwayne Dunham, it was released on February 3, 1993. It grossed $57 million worldwide and was followed in 1996 by Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco. This film is dedicated to producer Franklin R. Levy, who died during production of the film.
The Scorned is a 2005 horror television film. It was the first film cast entirely with the people from previous reality television series. It was filmed during the E! behind-the-scenes reality show Kill Reality.
Janissaries is a science fiction novel by American author Jerry Pournelle. Originally published in 1979, and illustrated by comic artist Luis Bermejo, it is the first book of Pournelle's Janissaries series. The following books are Janissaries: Clan and Crown, Janissaries III: Storms of Victory and Janissaries IV: Mamelukes.
Sankofa is a 1993 Ethiopian-produced drama film directed by Haile Gerima centered on the Atlantic slave trade. The storyline features Oyafunmike Ogunlano, Kofi Ghanaba, Mutabaruka, Alexandra Duah, and Afemo Omilami. The word Sankofa derives its meaning from the Ghanaian Akan language which means to "go back, look for, and gain wisdom, power and hope," according to Dr. Anna Julia Cooper. The word Sankofa stresses the importance of one not drifting too far away from one's past in order to progress in the future. In the film, Sankofa is depicted by a bird and the chants and drumming of a Divine Drummer. Gerima's film showed the importance of not having people of African descent drift far away from their African roots. Gerima used the journey of the character Mona to show how the African perception of identity included recognizing one's roots and "returning to one’s source" (Gerima).
Racial passing occurs when a person classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another. Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a black or brown person or of multiracial ancestry who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination.
The Ambassador is a 1984 American political thriller film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn, Rock Hudson and Allan Younger. It was the last theatrical release starring Rock Hudson before his death in October 1985.
Yentl is a 1983 American romantic musical drama film directed, co-written, co-produced by, and starring American entertainer Barbra Streisand. It is based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy".
Ten North Frederick is a 1958 American drama film in CinemaScope written and directed by Philip Dunne and starring Gary Cooper. The screenplay is based on the 1955 novel of the same name by John O'Hara.
Escape! is a 1930 British crime film directed by Basil Dean and starring Gerald du Maurier, Edna Best and Gordon Harker. It was based on the 1926 play of the same title by John Galsworthy, which was adapted again as a film in 1948.
Return to Peyton Place is a 1961 drama film in color by De Luxe and CinemaScope, produced by Jerry Wald, directed by José Ferrer, and starring Carol Lynley, Tuesday Weld, Jeff Chandler, Eleanor Parker, Mary Astor, and Robert Sterling. The screenplay by Ronald Alexander is based on the 1959 novel Return to Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. The film was distributed by 20th Century Fox and is a sequel to their earlier film Peyton Place (1957).
Caucasia (1998) is the first novel written by American author, Danzy Senna. It is the coming-of-age story of two multiracial girls, Birdie Lee and her sister Cole, who have a Caucasian mother and an African American father. The novel is set in Boston, Massachusetts, during the turbulent mid-1970s.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, is the first novel by the Ethiopian author Dinaw Mengestu. Published in 2007 by the Penguin Group, the novel focuses on the life of Sepha Stephanos, an Ethiopian immigrant living in Washington, D.C. after fleeing his country's revolution seventeen years earlier. Running a failing grocery store he ruminates on the past as he faces his own inward crisis of displacement and identity while simultaneously marveling at the gentrification of his neighborhood. This book took almost four years to write and Mengestu spent the most of a year revising it. The original version of this novel was published in the UK as Children of the Revolution. The name was changed by the publishers before being published in the US because they did not want the book to sound political. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007) was translated into 12 languages, and named a New York Times Notable Book. The book was also awarded The Guardian First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among numerous other honors.
Quicksand is a novel by American author Nella Larsen, first published in 1928. This is her first novel and she completed the first draft quickly. The novel was out of print from the 1930s to the 1970s. Quicksand is a work that explores both cross-cultural and interracial themes. Larsen dedicated the novel to her husband.
The Light of the Moon is a 2017 American drama film written, directed, and edited by Jessica M. Thompson. It stars Stephanie Beatriz as Bonnie, a woman who was sexually assaulted in New York City and covers a six-week period following the assault and deals with the resulting impact on her and the changes in her relationships.
I Don't Buy Kisses Anymore is a 1992 American romantic comedy film directed by Robert Marcarelli and starring Jason Alexander and Nia Peeples.
T Kira Madden is an American writer. She is the author of a memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of No Tokens Journal. In 2021, she received Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers.