2021 MVA Thesis Projects 

What does it mean to be “in-between”? To live in and out of multiple intersecting, paralleling, and overlapping senses of identity? For many, there is often a feeling of otherness and distance from the communities that make up the backgrounds of their identity due to notions of being unable to look, act, speak, and be who they say they are. Membership in their communities is fraught with challenges and obstacles, pushing and pulling from one misunderstood mix of backgrounds to another. We who live on this borderland between cultures find there is a powerful sense of shared experience and unity in the circumstances that constitute our exclusions. 

 

Being In-Between seeks to highlight the threads that connect us along the borderlands of mixed life through the individual experiences of four women—Desiree, Dana, Jessie, and Darlene—all navigating the notions of multi-racial, multi-national, multi-cultural, and multi-linguistic existence. While they may have nothing in common with each other along the lines of race, background, or perhaps even language, they are similar in that they are all women grappling with the complexities of intersectionality, community membership, cultural embodiment, and identity. Metaphorically, and also literally, those within the in-between, as well as the four women in this film, travel through the borderland often as neutral, community-less explorers on a journey both deliberate and accidental.

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Running time: 30 minutes