Filmmaker screens, discusses film focusing on ethnic identity

Film director Alicia Woods saw a flier for the Native Voices program at the University of Washington-Seattle and was hooked.

Woods said she liked the idea of a video as her thesis project because she could share her work with more than the academic world.

Her project became the film “American Red and Black: Stories of Afro-Native Identity” and was shown Thursday night at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center.

A discussion with Woods followed the screening. The film follows five people who are both black and of American Indian descent as they try to find their racial identity.

The film begins and ends with Vella, a woman whose family never speaks about its American Indian heritage until Vella’s grandmother dies. Woods follows Vella’s journey to find her heritage.

The other four people featured in the film come from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from urban areas to American Indian reservations.

Despite their different stories, Woods said she noticed the people in her film all followed the same path of having their identity challenged and then reforming their ideas about race and who they are.

One woman featured in the film said she grew up on an American Indian reservation. For her, college was the first time someone challenged her heritage and tried to define her as black or American Indian – not both.

Woods said college was also the first time she thought of her ethnic identity and said it wasn’t until she became an adult that people tried to place her into one race or another.

African-American and African Diaspora Studies graduate student Del Criscenzo, who worked to find sponsors to bring Woods to IU, said the film proved Black Indian identity is a contemporary issue in people’s everyday lives.

Woods said she had watched other Black Indian films, but none were interesting to her – she wanted to make a more personal film.

She said she was excited to see students attentively watching and relating to her film when she showed it in a high school and a middle school in Seattle.

Criscenzo said she found Woods’ path to be very empowering because she did what was important to her and what interested her, and didn’t care what other people would like.

Woods is currently working on three other films, including one she plans to start in August about children who are adopted out of their American Indian tribes into Caucasian families. Woods’ father was one of these children, and she said she plans to include her path to find her father’s heritage in the film.

Woods said she spent a year editing her film and a summer watching other films and taking notes about what she liked and disliked to apply to her work.

“From east to west, you have this Afro-Native connection,” Woods said.