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Check out this article on BBook.com: http://www.blackbookmag.com/article/woman-in-burka A Question of Color By Nick Haramis Film still from Woman in Burka. “I grew up in the Bronx in a large Irish Catholic family filled with incredibly funny oddballs,” says filmmaker, actor, and script reader Jonathan Lisecki, as if needing to explain the origins of his skewed comedy. “Every family get-together was like some dark, drunken version of ‘Last Comic Standing.’ I learned early on to try and look at the world with a finely tuned sense of humor.” Appropriately, his first short film, Woman in Burka, about the scant roles available to “Middle Eastern-looking” actors struggling to find work in post-9/11 America, is funny. It’s a real knee-slapper, in fact. Lisecki, a white man, might not be the most obvious choice to helm cinematic social commentary deriding racism in Hollywood, but he maintains an understanding that, while different, shares obvious parallels with race relations. “As an actor who never hid being gay, I’ve auditioned for many ‘screaming queen’ and ‘funny faggot’ roles. The parts aren’t always terrible—the projects themselves sometimes have redeeming qualities—but you question whether you should be perpetuating a stereotype. A straight casting director once told me, with no sense of irony, that I was ‘in the running for a role if they didn’t go Gay-sian.’” www.bbook.com