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 Project

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.

Production Awards

FILM PROJECTS

• Forget Me Not
  Open Eye Pictures, Inc.
  Producer and Director: Andy Abrahams Wilson
  The story of the Aids Memorial in Golden Gate Park
• Inside/Out: Life in a California Prison
  Backbone Media
  Writer, Producer and Director: Noel Schwerin
  Life in a California State Prison
• Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times
  International Documentary Association
  Producer and Director: Peter Jones
  The emergence of modern-day Los Angeles during the Chandler era at the Los Angeles Times
• Metropolis in the Making
  International Documentary Association
  Producer and Director: Clement Barclay
  Urban redevelopment in Los Angeles: Who decides what goes and what stays?
• Moments in Time
  Rural California Broadcasting Corporation (KRCB)
  Producer and Director: Nancy Kelly
  How citizen action saved the Marin County coast

RADIO PROJECTS

• Calexico: California Borderlands
  W.M. Corporation
  Project Director: Peter Laufer
  The true story of life in California’s borderlands

Research And Development Film Awards

• Behind the Velvet Curtain: The Hidden History of the U.S. Supreme Court and Gay Rights
  Film Arts Foundation
  Project Director: Beth Pielert
  The Supreme Court and Gay Rights
• Filipinos: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW
  Iris Films
  Project Director and Producer: Marissa Aroy
  The forgotten role of Filipinos in the early farmworker movement
• Homegirls
  Urban Berney Foundation
  Producer and Director: Isabel Vega
  Once involved in gang life, young women get a chance at a new life
• Jack London: Twentieth-Century Man
  Film Arts Foundation
  Director: Christopher Million
  The life and work of Jack London
• Lost Treasure Hunt
  Film Arts Foundation
  Producer and Project Director: Matthew G. Davis
  Enlivening California history for young people
• ¿Mas Bebés?
  Visual Communications
  Producer and Director: Renee Tajima-Peña
  The forced sterilization of Mexican American women and the fight for justice
• Preaching Revolution
  Center for Independent Documentary
  Coproducers and Codirectors: Katie Galloway and Po Kutchins
  The emerging progressive evangelical movement

FILM/VIDEO

• California and the American Dream
  Bay Area Video Coalition
  Exploring the dynamics of culture, identity and civic engagement in California
• Chicano Rock!
  Rock 'n’ Roll and Latino Identity in California
  Historical Society of Southern California
  Chicano rock ‘n’ roll and it’s role in defining the Latino Community
• Going on 13
  Film Arts Foundation
  Four girls from immigrant and working-class families navigate adolescence
• Grassroots Rising
  Asian-American Workers in Los Angeles
  Visual Communications
  Low-wage Asian immigrant workers struggle to improve their lives through community-based organizing
• Hollywood Chinese
  Film Arts Foundation
  San Francisco
  A film history of Chinese Americans in Hollywood
• Juvies
  Community Transitions
  Young offenders in one of the largest juvenile facilities in the United States await trial and sentencing in adult court
• Los Angeles Now
  Center for the Study of Los Angeles
  L.A.'s changing character and culture is explored
• Manju Mamas and the Ahn-Pan Brigade
  Visual Communications
  How three Nisei Christian women in the San Fernando Valley stay connected to their Japanese heritage
• Also Ran
  Film Arts Foundation
  Director-Producer Sara MacPherson and Producer Mark Arellano
  The world of the racetrack worker at Bay Meadows racetrack
• Paperback Dreams
  Catticus Corporation
  Producer-Director Alex Beckstead
  The rise and fall of independent bookstores
• Preacher’s Sons
  International Documentary Association
  Coproducers-Codirectors Celia Reed and Mark Nealey
  Chronicling the life of a gay couple and their five adopted sons
• Prison Town, USA
  Center for Independent Documentary
  The effect of the prison boom on a rural California town
• Romántico
  Film Arts Foundation
  San Francisco
  An undocumented Mexican musician supports himself and his family in Mexico by playing "romantica" music in San Francisco restaurants
• Seasons of Migration
  Khmer Arts Academy
  Interpreting the changing identities of Cambodian refugees in Long Beach through Cambodian classical dance
• The Tailenders
  Film Arts Foundation
  A missionary organization uses low-tech media devices to evangelize Mexican agricultural workers
• Thinking Grande: Creating California's Mexican Wonderland
  Media Arts Center San Diego
  One man spends decades building a Mexican village in Santa Barbara County
• Valentino’s Ghost
  International Documentary Association
  How Hollywood portrays Arabs and Muslims
• When Medicine Got It Wrong
  International Documentary Association
  Producer-Director Katie Cadigan
  How San Mateo County parents changed how schizophrenia is perceived

RADIO

• The Boomtown Chronicles:
  Reflections on a Changing California
  KUSP-FM - Santa Cruz
  How four California families on California's Central Coast are redefining the concept of home and community in an era of widespread change
• Growing Old in East L.A.
  Atlantic Public Media
  Elderly Chicanos in East Los Angeles tell their stories in a radio documentary
• Pastures of Plenty:
  The History of California Farmworkers
  Pataphysical Broadcasting Foundation, Inc.
  A multipart radio series on the history of California’s agricultural workers
• Saving the Sierra:
  Voices of Conservation in Action
  The Sierra Fund
  How community-based conservationists are working together for a better Sierra

PHOTOGRAPHY

• From Where I Am Standing:
  Photographs and Writings Documenting the Experiences of Latino Youth in Los Angeles, 1995-2005
  College of Arts and Letters,
  California State University, Los Angeles
  A group of Latino young adults, all participants in a photography and writing project as junior-high and high- school students, document their lives through words and photographs
• Herstory
  Migrant Photography Project
  Lindsay
  A photography project documenting in images and words the lives and work of Mexican migrant women in Central California
• Iranian Jewish California
  Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity
  A look at Persian Jewish immigrants in California
• Life Cycles:
  Reflections of Change and a New Hope for Future Generations
  Regents of the University of California
  Documenting the lives of migrant workers in the Coachella Valley
• Living Under the Trees
  California Legal Assistance, Inc.
  Documenting Oaxacan farmworker communities in California
• The New Okies
  Santa Barbara County Arts Commission
  Photographs of farmworkers in Santa Barbara County past and present
• Paving Paradise: Stories From the Santa Ana Watershed
  Foundation for California State University
  San Bernardino and the Water Resource Institute
  Photographs document the watershed and its role within surrounding communities
• The Hmong of Central California: A Culture in Transition
  Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries
  Documenting in photographs the Hmong refugee community