‘Mixed And Matched’ Part Of CT Film Festival

The Connecticut Film Festival returns this weekend to Bethel and Danbury, and one Newtown resident is right in the thick of it.

Marsha Daria is among the filmmakers who will have a project in this year’s festival, which opens Thursday, April 26, and continues until Sunday, April 29, with dozens of features, shorts, documentaries, animations and student films screened at The Palace Theatre, Danbury Library and Danbury Women’s Center, and Bethel Cinema.

(For full schedule and synopses of the films, along with the workshops and programs being offered this weekend, visit www.ctfilmfest.com.)

Among the films in this year’s festival is Mixed and Matched by Newtown resident, Western Connecticut State University professor and documentarian Dr Marsha Daria.

Dr Daria, who coordinates the elementary education program and is a professor in the Department of Education and Educational Psychology at WCSU, has created a film about multiracial relationships, and especially the growing number of multiracial children in the United States. The film challenges audiences to ponder the meaning of race. In a nation where race has long been polarized, the mixed parentage of many multiracial children opens a bridge to examine one’s thinking about the subject.

“It is important to me,” she said this week, “as an educator, to bring awareness to other educators about multiracial children and their approach to them.

“As the parent of two multiracial children,” she continued, “I also thought it would be interesting to others to hear how children in the greater Danbury area feel about this subject. In the film I explored family diversity, and student diversity, which we see exploding at the university level.”

Racial mixture has a deep, rich and complex history in the United States, as well as throughout the world, says the filmmaker. For some multiracial people, developing a positive identity may be more challenging than for others. The combination of personal feelings about their racial differences, the way they socialize within their family, and the attitudes and pressures they experience when they begin to function in society play a heavy part in the way they see themselves, said Dr Daria.

“I found it interesting to note that more people are identifying themselves as mixed race,” she said Tuesday afternoon, April 24. “This subject used to marginalize people, they didn’t want to talk about it. Now people celebrate these differences. They don’t shy away from it. A lot of people I spoke with for this project told me, ‘I want people to ask me about my parents, my heritage. I want to talk about it.”

Census 2010 denotes the first extensive recording of the explosive rise in the multiracial population that has changed over ten years since data was collected for the 2000 Census.

“While seven million people identified themselves as being white and ‘some other race’ in 2000, nine million people chose more than one race on the 2010 Census,” she pointed out.

Dr Daria interviewed more than 200 people for her project — primarily students in elementary, middle, and high school levels — although only ten interviewees appear in the finished film. Caroline Daria, David Daria, Rosebella Finnegan, Marissa Segura, Nasir Fleming, and Jonathan Garcia are the students who share their feelings in the film, as do Dr Jack Gillette, a professor at Yale University; Dr Kathryn Campbell, psychologist, Western Connecticut State University; and Dr Victor Waters and Dr JoAnn Yanez, a couple.

“We discussed their self-identity, social relationships, discrimination, and family traditions,” she said. “The way they socialize within their family, and the attitudes and pressures they experience when they begin to function in society, play a heavy part in the way they see themselves. … Being mixed race … according to the current Census and the children I spoke to … is now celebrated.”

Mixed and Matched has a running time of 30 minutes. It will be screened as part of a collection called Pot Luck Shorts on Friday, April 27, at noon, at Bethel Cinema, and then again (still within Pot Luck Shorts) on Sunday, April 29, also at noon, at The Palace Theatre in Danbury. Dr Daria will be in Danbury for a question and answer session following Sunday’s screening.

Pot Luck Shorts, which includes nine films in addition to Mixed and Matched, has a full running time of approximately two hours.

Tickets for Friday or Sunday’s screening are $8 each; visit www.ctfilmfest.com for tickets and additional information.