Educational Media Reviews Online

Octavio Warnock-Graham is a biracial man who grew up in Maumee, Ohio, with his white mother and her white husband, his father. His mother, Harriet, never told Octavio that his biological father was black. She told family members at different times that his father was Native American or Puerto Rican. An angry Octavio forces the truth out of his mother, and in an interview, she tells her son that she had an affair with a black man while working in Washington, D.C. in 1969, and she reveals his name.

The film opens with various location shots of Maumee, Ohio, a very white, suburban town established in 1817. The viewer sees a man playing with a dog, a family having a barbeque, and a series of suburban homes. It’s quintessential Americana. Octavio alternately narrates and interviews his mother, grandmother, uncles, cousins, a family friend and his sister. While helping his grandmother roll dough, he asks her, “When did Harriet tell you I was black?” The grandmother, incensed, replies, “Harriet didn’t ever tell me you were black because you’re not black. Maybe you’re 15 or 20% black, but you’re Irish and Dutch and Scottish and German, you’re a mixture.” His uncles tell him it didn’t matter what color he as, he was “one of ours,” and in a poignant moment, his father, David Graham, tells him when he fell in love with Harriet, he fell in love with Octavio as well. Still photographs show Octavio from a very young boy to one coming of age. He looks like a happy and well-adjusted young man, and Octavio suggests that he was an imaginative and artistic child. However, all wasn’t idyllic—Octavia relates a cruel story of his junior high school classmates calling him a “nigger.” It would be more effective if he reflected on the impact of that incident.

He decides he wants to track down his biological father, so he takes a cab to the airport, gets a hotel room in D.C., and makes one phone call. He meets his father, to whom he bears a resemblance. They seem to bond instantly without any awkwardness. By the end of the film, Octavio confesses that he has been able to let go of his anger at his mother, and that her silence will no longer have power over him.

His family’s love for Octavio is quite moving and validating, and his catharsis is vividly mapped. Thematically reminiscent of the extraordinary memoir, James McBride’s The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, this short but resonant film will interest mixed race as well as adopted people, and anyone who wants to track down their roots.

Awards

• Best Documentary, First Look Film Festival 2007
• Best Documentary Short/ USA Film Festival 2007