California Council for the Humanities

Programs

The California Council for the Humanities connects Californians to ideas and one another in order to understand
our shared heritage and diverse cultures, inspire civic participation, and shape our future.

Featured Projects

Jose Luis Bonilla

"!Thinking Grande!"

Mexican immigrant Jose Luis Bonilla, dishwasher turned businessman, spent over 20 years building his colossal, hand-made Mexican Disneyland in the heart of California, only to abandon it after permit problems. Filmmaker Kevin Bender captures Bonilla’s story in the documentary “Thinking Grande.” The film premieres on  KPBS, San Diego’s public TV station, on Tuesday, May 26, at 9:30 pm.

Find out more.

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Isha, one of the four girls featured in the documentary

“Going On 13”

Watch a trailer of “Going on 13,” a coming-of-age documentary film about four years in the life of four girls in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Find out more.

Newly Funded Projects:

See press release.

PRODCTION GRANTS

• Cruz Reynoso: A Man for All Seasons
  Producer: Abby Ginzberg
  Cruz Reynoso: A Man for All Seasons is a multilayered portrait of former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, the son of farm workers who has devoted his life to ending discrimination, fighting for immigrant rights and promoting equal opportunity. The film documents Reynoso’s early life in rural Southern California, his leadership of California Rural Legal Assistance and his election to the California Supreme Court. Reynoso's story reveals aspects of 20th-century California history as seen through the lens of a unique individual who was at the crossroads of change and controversy for more than seven decades. View photo slideshow.
• Tom Bradley’s Impossible Dream
  Producers: Lyn Goldfarb and Alison Sotomayor
  Tom Bradley's Impossible Dream is a feature-length documentary about the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city elected without a black majority electorate. Elected in 1973, Bradley served as Los Angeles mayor for 20 years and oversaw the complex dynamics of race, politics and economics as L.A. transformed itself into one of the most diverse and important cities in the world.
• Squeezebox Stories
  Producer: Julie Caine
  Co-Producer: Marié Abe
  Squeezebox Stories is a radio documentary exploring the cultural, social and musical history of the people’s instrument: the accordion. Listeners will be taken on a musical road trip up and down the state of California to hear from a diverse group of individuals who use the accordion in a wide variety of traditional and popular musical styles — German polka, Mexican norteño, Zydeco, Cajun, Irish folk music, Balkan dance music— as well as in modern hybridized and eclectic accordion-based musical traditions.
• Strand: A Natural History of Cinema
  Director: Christian Bruno  
  Producer: Natalija Vekic
  What does it mean to go to the movies and how has the movie-going experience changed over the years? The feature-length film “A Natural History Of Cinema” examines these questions by focusing on the rise and decline of San Francisco’s postwar movie theater culture in the 1960s and ’70s against the backdrop of the changing face of public space in postwar urban America. Viewers will hear from scholars, essayists and many important figures in the Bay Area film community about the social dimensions of movie going, the factors that led to the closure of independently owned single–screen movie theaters, and how the demise of public space affects individuals and communities.
  Read an interview with film's director, Christian Bruno.
• The Delano Manongs:
  The Forgotten Heroes of the UFW
  Producer: Marissa Aroy
  The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW documents a small group of Filipino farm labor leaders in Delano, Calif., who instigated the great Delano grape strike in 1965 and helped create the United Farm Workers Union. The grape strike catapulted César Chávez into the national spotlight, but the Filipino leaders received little recognition for their efforts. Using animation, archival footage, and interviews with key leaders, participants and historians, the film tells the gripping story of this forgotten part of labor history. Producer Marissa Aroy, a second-generation Filipino American who grew up in the Delano area, narrates.

NEW MEDIA GRANTS

• Cambodian Community History Archive Website
  Producer: Susan Needham
  The Cambodian Community History Archive Website will create a permanent, bilingual, interactive multimedia digital archive of the Cambodian Community in Long Beach. Photographs, historical documents, audio recordings and video clips will tell the story of the community — how it came to be the largest Cambodian community outside Southeast Asia; how Long Beach Cambodians have re-created Cambodian cultural practices in California; and how Cambodians have contributed to the economy, politics and redevelopment of Long Beach. This project is a collaborative effort of California State University, Dominguez Hills; CSU Long Beach; and the Historical Society of Long Beach.
• CaliforniaNIOT.org
  Executive Producer: Patrice O'Neill
  California Not In Our Town (CaliforniaNiot.org) is a unique social networking site where Californians can learn about hate crimes in their communities and engage with others to take action against them. The site is an outgrowth of the national Not In Our Town movement that encourages community response to hate crimes. The site will feature streaming video, interactive maps, user-created blogs, an advice center, networking capabilities, and much more, all with the aim of giving people they tools they need to fight intolerance.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

• Operation Popcorn 
  Producer: David Grabias
  Operation Popcorn tells the remarkable story of a young Hmong American businessman in Fresno who got caught up in a Rambo-like plot to launch a coup in Laos to stop human rights violations — and who now faces federal terrorism charges and life in prison. As his trial unfolds, we discover how the Hmong community is redefining its identity and coming to terms with the realities of life in modern-day California.
• Redevelopment Blues:
  The Legacy of West Oakland 
  Producer: Erin FitzGerald
  Redevelopment Blues: The Legacy of West Oakland tells the story of West Oakland's 7th Street neighborhood, once a vibrant center of music, culture and activism, but now known for its culture of violence. The film celebrates the area’s history and examines its decline at the hands of top-down redevelopment forces that physically divided and displaced the community. Along the way, it posits the idea that actions of the past without regard for culture, community and family had a hand in creating the West Oakland of today. 
• My Life Before Me
  Producer: Banker White
  My Life Before Me is a documentary about the life of Afro-Cuban musician and Yoruba priest Carlos Lázaro Aldama Pérez. His story explores how African traditions survived slavery and how they are now thriving two centuries later in California and all over the world.See trailer.
• At 18
  Producer: Goro Toshima
  At 18 tells the story of three youths as they try to find a life for themselves after they age out of the California foster care system. The film follows the youths over a 12-month period and reveals their successes and failures during a crucial time of transition.
• Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past
  Project Director: William Deverell
  Producer: Walter Dominguez
  Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past will be a four-part, four-hour documentary series about the intertwined Mexican and Anglo American ethnic history of Los Angeles. The series is based upon the book of the same title by Professor William Deverell, a historian and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
• Green Shall Overcome
  Producer: Megan Gelstein
  Green Shall Overcome will examine the viability of the national movement for green-collar jobs as both a pathway out of poverty for young adults and a key weapon in the battle against climate change. The film focuses on Van Jones, an Oakland, Calif.-based African-American civil rights lawyer who helped make Oakland the first city in the nation to create a green job corps program.
• Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
  Producer: Arwen Curry
  Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is an hour-long documentary film exploring the life, roots and ideas of the celebrated feminist science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin, Bay Area-born and raised, now 79, exploded onto the literary scene of the late 1960s, elevating science fiction to new levels of political sophistication and artistry. Although she has repeatedly won the highest awards in her genre, her story has never before been told on film.
• A Hammer in Her Hand
  Project Director: Maria Brooks
  A Hammer in Her Hand is a 60-minute television documentary about the complex history of women in California's construction trades. The film tells the stories of pioneer and current tradeswomen while examining such issues as race, gender, class and politics that continue to shape tradeswomen’s experiences.
• The History of the Universe As Told by Wonder Woman
  Producer: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
  The History Of The Universe As Told By Wonder Woman looks at the 67-year career of Wonder Woman and her transformation from comic book character to feminist icon. The film addresses the legacy and cultural influence of Wonder Woman in light of a modern California mainstream media industry that creates and perpetuates images of women.
• Now En Español
  Producer: Andrea Meller
  This 90-minute feature documentary chronicles the ups and downs of being a Latina actress in Hollywood by following five dynamic Latinas who dub into Spanish the popular television program “Desperate Housewives” while trying to break through as actors. Along the way, the film explores issues of language and identity and what it means to be Latina today.