FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2008
Contacts:
Brandon Wright
Center for Multicultural Cooperation
559-355-7740
bwufw@hotmail.com
Maura Hurley, Public Information Officer
California Council for the Humanities
415-391-1474, ext. 308
mhurley@calhum.org
FRESNO, Calif. — Five Fresno area high school students have spent the past year working on a documentary film tracing the lives of three San Joaquin Valley families who came to California to work the land and create new lives in America's agricultural heartland.
The public will have a chance to view the 30-minute film, "Common Ground, Sowing the Seeds of Understanding in the San Joaquin Valley," on Thursday, July 24, at 7 p.m. at the historic Tower Theater in Fresno. The young filmmakers will discuss the making of the film and answer questions after the screening.
The teens made the film as part of How I See It: Youth Digital Filmmakers, a statewide project of the California Council for the Humanities that includes seven other youth filmmaking projects.
The film follows the students as they talk to agricultural families of different backgrounds—Latino, African American, and Hmong—who came to California to start new lives, and explore how their relationship to the land connects them to the community and to one another.
The three families featured in the film are the Arenases, the Wellses and the Hers. The Arenases, who live in Sanger, came from Mexico as migrant farm workers in 1967. Today they grow raisin grapes on 40 acres they own near Fresno. The Arenas children all graduated from college—the first in their family to do so.
The Wells family moved to California from Arkansas after World War II, and eventually settled in West Fresno. Surrounded by fields of grapes, corn, and peas, the Wells children worked hard for neighboring farmers to earn money for clothes, toys, and trips to the county fair. Today the children have successful careers in the city but have not forgotten the lessons they learned out in the fields.
The Hers family came to California after the Vietnam War, overcoming language and cultural barriers to become successful growers in Clovis. They sell specialty Asian vegetables at farmers' markets across the state. The younger generations of the family participate in the family business, taking pride in the opportunity to share—through food— a part of Hmong culture, with the larger community.
"What they have in common is their connection to the land," said Brandon Wright, Deputy Director for the Center for Multicultural Cooperation, a Fresno nonprofit that uses new media technologies to build understanding among different cultures. The center was one of eight organizations to receive a $30,000 grant from the California Council for the Humanities in October 2007 to conduct the yearlong project.
The filmmakers met with the families in their homes, filming for many long days in the valley heat. "I learned how hard people work for their dream of getting an education, and how it is making their lives better," said filmmaker Maricela Hernandez, 18.
“We saw relationships develop between our students and their subjects," said filmmaker MaryJane Skjellerup, who worked with the students on the project. "What's powerful about our program is that it is bringing together people of different backgrounds and generations to learn from one another about our shared history."
Denise Blum, an instructor at the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at California State University, Fresno served as humanities scholar and advisor on the project. She introduced the teens to local authors, including William Saroyan and David Mas Masamoto, and had them watch the film “The Grapes of Wrath.” She also held a workshop for them on cultural competency, where they got together with university students.
"Denni helped prepare them for making the film by having them examine preconceptions they had about different groups in the valley and their own experiences of racism or discrimination," said Wright. "Our students learned about people whose lives are different from their own. In the process, they learned how to work together and value each others' contributions to the project."
“The idea behind Youth Digital Filmmakers is to give youth a voice in what happens in their communities and skills they can use in the future,” said Ralph Lewin, executive director of the California Council for the Humanities. “The humanities scholars give the teens a broader perspective on their film topics and help them see how issues they’re dealing with today are similar to those of other places and times.”
The Youth Digital Filmmakers project is being conducted in partnership with
the Digital Storytelling Institute of ZeroDivide. http://www.zerodivide.org/.
In addition to the Fresno project, the following projects received Youth Digital Filmmakers grants:
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
Oakland: East Bay Asian Youth Center
“I Ain’t Leaving” is a film about the experiences of Cambodian American
youth growing up in the impoverished Oak Park Apartments in the San Antonio District of East Oakland, where residents cope with gangs on one hand and
neighborhood gentrification on the other.
San Francisco: Conscious Youth Media Crew
“A Choice of Weapons” is a narrative film, written, produced and directed by
young San Francisco filmmakers about the impact of the redevelopment of their San Francisco neighborhood.
Concord: Ally Action, Inc.
"Don't Erase My History" highlights LGBT history in California, a story largely untold in the classroom. The filmmakers explore their own perspectives on being LGBT in a culture that has largely ignored LGBT history.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Long Beach: Khmer Girls in Action
The project, titled “My Reality and My Vision: Stories from Long Beach,” explores the legacy of the Khmer Rouge war and its effects on first-generation Cambodian-American youths.
Los Angeles: Covenant House California
"Hidden Hollywood, At-Risk Youth Explore the Geography of Disconnection" explores how homeless youths are finding a place for themselves in the world.
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Lodi: Lodi High School
“Finding Our Own Way: Teens in Lodi" is made up of five documentary films about such issues as racism among Lodi High teens, teenage drug abuse, video games, skateboarders and cliques on campus.
Siskiyou County: Siskiyou Arts Council
The film, "Voices Between the Mountains, Coming of Age in the Siskiyous," explores the origins and influences of Siskiyou County's Native American culture and the challenges young people face bridging the gap between a world partially rooted in the past.
ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA COUNCIL FOR THE HUMANITIES
The California Council for the Humanities has supported and created programs that bring Californians together around their history and culture for more than 30 years. Since 2001 the Council has been engaged in a statewide initiative, California Stories, designed to tell the larger story of California. Youth Digital Filmmakers is part of the California Council for the Humanities' "How I See It" campaign, designed to give California youth an opportunity to explore community and personal issues through filmmaking and present their thoughts, ideas and discoveries to the public. The Youth Digital Filmmakers project is being conducted in partnership with the Digital Storytelling Institute of ZeroDivide.
For information on the California Council for the Humanities# # #