THE TWELVE DISCIPLES OF NELSON MANDELA, film based on the story of the first wave of South African exiles who left Bloemfontein in 1960 to keep the anti-apartheid movement alive from East Africa, Europe, America and Cuba. In their heroic journey, this group of twelve -- and the thousands of young South African freedom fighters that would follow them - helped to create a global seismic shift that ultimately toppled the apartheid system in South Africa. One of the Disciples, Pule Benjamin Leinaeng, was the filmmaker's late father.

"Harris pays tribute to Benjamin Pule Leinaeng, the stepfather who raised him, by traveling to South Africa and excavating the late Leinaeng¹s life as a political activist [in] the ANC and whose real-life exploits play like a James Bond film. Harris¹ trademark elegant visual style (owing much to both high-end fashion magazines and experimental film and photography) is put into the service of dramatic re-creations that flesh out documentary commentary from old friends and political allies, while family photos and home video become potent artifacts in the transformation of grief into celebration" - LA Weekly.

- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Harris' historical re-enactments are impressively colorful and detailed" - New York Press

"A visually gorgeous melding of poetry and politics."
-Ernest Hardy, LA Weekly

A mythopoetic odyssey exploring identity and spirituality across three generations of an African-American family. USA, East Africa and Brazil.

Astoundingly beautiful and epic in scope, That's My Face (é minha cara) is a personal documentary offering an entire generation of African Americans a groundbreaking perspective on the maddening diasporic search for a mythic motherland. In healing his own cultural yearnings, director Thomas Allen Harris journeys beyond the political movements of his day and into a spiritual realm where he finds much more then he expects.

His grandparents' African Methodist-Episcopal church taught Thomas as a child that Africa was a place that could only be saved by Christian missionaries. But his rebellious mother was part of the 1970s' movement that regarded Africa as home "because we knew America didn't want us" and migrated the family to Tanzania, East Africa. When they arrived in the modern city of Dar-es-Saalam, Africa seemed more like Miami than the motherland they imagined.

Thomas learned to love Africa for what it was, but when he returned to the Bronx, he was unable to express his newfound identity. Even his African Methodist-Episcopalian faith failed to provide him comfort until he learned from an Afro-Brazilian friend that beneath the patina of conventional Christian iconography is a rich double life of African ancestral spirit worship. Like his mother, Thomas embarks on a migration across the ocean, this time to Brazil, in an effort to find a sense of home and belonging.

"Shot entirely on Super-8 film and employing an innovative sound design that uses rap and hip-hop multivoice sampling, That's My Face is as much an artistic gem as a spiritual gift."
- Shari Frilot, Programmer, 2002 Sundance Film Festival

"The impressionist beauty of Harris's Super-8 footage should give pause to anyone continuing to shoot their documentaries on digital video."
- Anthony Kaufman, The Village Voice

"Mesmerizing documentary..."
- Ronnie Scheib, Variety

To purchase a VHS copy of É Minha Cara/That's My Face, contact Chimpanzee Productions

Institutions VHS: $350.00
Festival Rental Beta or 35mm: $300.00

VINTAGE - Families of Value is a fantasy documentary film which intimately explores three African-American families through the eyes of lesbian and gay male siblings -- two or more in the same family.

Awarded Best Documentary by the 1996 Atlanta International Film Festival and a Golden Gate by the 1996 San Francisco International Film Festival, this lyrical and impressionistic film, blends intimate and sometimes painful conversations between family members, with dramatic re-creations, verit* footage, performance, audio visual collage and archival photos and films to sketch a provocative tableau of three modern black families negotiating sexuality and identity.