One Big Hapa Family
1h 25m
(2010, 85 minutes)
Director: Jeff Chiba Stearns
Preconceptions about racial purity are under the microscope in this fast-paced, heart-warming documentary by Jeff Chiba Stearns, who has a heritage that is half-Japanese, half-European. The spark for this film was ignited at a Koga family reunion in Kelowna, British Columbia. Looking around at all his relatives, Stearns realized that everyone in his Japanese Canadian family had married interracially after his grandparents' generation. This spurred him to investigate and to explain statistical evidence that people of Japanese origin marry non-Japanese partners at a rate of 95%, much higher than is the case with people of other origins. Jeff Stearns puts his talents as an animator to task, mixing them with keen observations, frank discussions with four generations of his family, and a humorous and personable approach. What results is an entertaining and intelligent examination of how mixed children today perceive their unique identities. It leaves him wondering if mixing could be the end of multiculturalism as we know it.