How I See It: Youth Digital Filmmakers
“I Ain’t Leaving”
Sponsor: East Bay Asian Youth Center
Oakland
Project Director: Peter Kim
Filmmaker: CB Smith-Dahl
Humanities Scholar: Elaine Kim, University of California, Berkeley
A group of Cambodian American youth from Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood will create a film about their struggle to protect their emotional and physical connection to the Oak Park Apartments – their home and a center of the Cambodian American community in Oakland – amidst the forces of gentrification and tenant organizing.
The young filmmakers will be trained in equipment usage, interview techniques, story development, shooting, sound lighting, crew roles and editing. “They will also explore different ways to communicate a message and convey an experience and will be challenged to think objectively and critically,” said Project Director Peter Kim, who is managing director of the East Bay Asian Youth Center’s after school media arts center.
The film will primarily be composed of interviews with Oak Park youths, their families, neighbors, police officers and elected officials. Supplemental material will include archival news footage of the legal struggle over Oak Park, which resulted in the renovation of the complex, and man-on-the street interviews in the San Antonio neighborhood. All music will be original and youth-produced.