After 5-1/2 years, Mixed in America: Little Mixed Sunshine if FINALLY finished. Here's part 1 of a 2-part finale of the mini-series where we've followed the film's progress.

Throughout this first season of Radio Film School, we've followed the progress of my short film documentary "Little Mixed Sunshine," the first installment of my "Mixed in America" short film documentary series which tells the stories of biracial people in America. So much has gone into the making of this film that I want to discuss. If you've been listening to the show and the mini-series "Shooting Sunshine," you've heard a lot of the creative challenges I've faced. These are all important lessons from which any filmmaker can glean valuable insight. And in part 2 of this mini-series finale we'll get into the details of the final creative decisions I made and how I arrived at them. That will be next week.

This week I want to tackle a more complex topic—that is the roles that race and culture have played in my life, and how a filmmaker's personal background can have such a profound effect on his or her work. Show regulars JD & Yolanda Cochran return as they give me critical feedback on the rough draft of the film I shared with them back in March.

And as is often the case on this show, we start with a couple of funny, yet poignant stories to set the stage.

Reach Out

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Music in this Episode

Music was curated from FreeMusicArchive.org. In order of appearance, the music in this episode:

• A Thousand Years (Instrumental) by Christina Perri courtesy of Song Freedom (All rights reserved)
• Fogby Sergey Chermisinov (CC BY)
• virgo indigoby Fog Lake (CC BY)
• Tennesee Hayrideby Jason Sha (CC BY)
• Back to the Woodsby Jason Shaw (CC BY)
• Acoustic Bluesby Jason Shaw (CC BY)
• Remembering Past Everything by Pipe Choir (CC BY-)
• Undercover Vampire Policemanby Chris Zabriskie (CC BY)
• A Thousand Years (with Vocals) by Christina Perri courtesy of Song Freedom (All rights reserved)

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