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On Thursday, July 24 2008, the Center for Multicultural Cooperation presented the Community Premiere of COMMON GROUND: Sowing the Seeds of Understanding in the San Joaquin Valley. The 30 minute documentary film, commissioned by the California Council for the Humanities as part of their Youth Digital Filmmakers initiative, was produced by five local high school students (Jennifer Gaxiola, Maricela Hernandez, Daniel Parker, Lilian Vang and Nora Walker) over the past year, and profiled the stories of three Central Valley farm families. Over three hundred people filled the Tower Theatre in central Fresno to view the film and participate in a post-screening discussion with the youth producers and Humanities Scholar Dr. Denise Blum.
Youth Producers with the storyteller families
Please see below for more info on the film!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2008
Contacts:
Brandon Wright
Center for Multicultural Cooperation
559-355-7740
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Maura Hurley, Public Information Officer
California Council for the Humanities
415- 391-1474, ext. 308
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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 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.
³We saw relationships develop between our students and their subjects," said
filmmaker Mary Jane 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 scholar and
advisor on the project. She introduced the teens to local authors, including
William Saroyan and David Mas Masamoto, and had the students watch the film
³The Grapes of Wrath.² She also held a workshop for them on cultural
competency, where they got together with university students.
"Denni helped prepare our students 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. "They
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."
³The 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,² said
Ralph Lewin, executive director of the California Council for the
Humanities. ³The humanities scholars give the teens a broader perspective on
their film topics and help them see how issues they¹re dealing with today
are similar to those of other places and times.²
The Youth Digital Filmmakers project is being conducted in partnership with
the Digital Storytelling Institute of ZeroDivide.
http://www.zerodivide.org/.
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