Digital Village Review (2003)

In April 2003, the 3-year long Hewlett-Packard East Palo Alto Digital Village project came to its conclusion. An evaluation session was held where the different partners reported on their technology projects and future goals. The Rev. Jesse Jackson also came to speak on the Digital Village project and the work still to be accomplished. Ms. Matthews, former chair of the East Palo Alto Digital Village Advisory Board, will present selections from the videotape of that event.

Presenter: Rebecca Matthews
Running Time: unedited
Source

Two entrepreneurs work with their MBA student consultants as they launch their new businesses. The mission of the Start Up agency portrayed in the film is to help local residents start small businesses. After a resident completes the Start Up training, they are eligible for ongoing consulting with students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In this way, local entrepreneurs get needed support while business students gain real world experience. Produced by Michael Levin and Stanford Media Works for the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Presenter: Start Up Staff
Producer: Micheal Levin
Running Time: 11 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

No Hunger in My Home (1989)

For some in our community, just getting by with enough to eat each day and a roof over one’s head is still the primary challenge. This video at responses to hunger at the local level through East Palo Alto’s Ecumenical Hunger Program (EHP). As East Palo Alto becomes part of Silicon Valley, it’s important to remember Produced by Nancy Brink as a thesis film in the Stanford Documentary Film Program.

Presenter: EHP Staff
Producer: Nancy Brink
Running Time: 25 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

Typically nonprofits start with no money and the first order of business is to find some. In contrast to this the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation adopted a social venture capitalist approach with the Neighborhood Improvement Initiative. With $5 million in start up funds allocated, the Foundation worked with partners Stanford University, Peninsula Community Foundation and the Community Development Institute to set up a large-scale Neighborhood Improvement Initiative in East Palo Alto. Residents themselves met weekly over the course of many months to develop a proposal to submit to the Hewlett Foundation for funding of projects. Ultimately, residents chose to create a new organization to oversee implementation of the plan. The video documents the process from its origin through planning and acceptance of the proposal, to the birth of the new agency, One East Palo Alto (OEPA). Produced by Jim Bracken Nonprofit Communications for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Peninsula Community Foundation.

Presenter: OEPA Staff
Producer: Jim Bracken
Running Time: 19 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

In a region where quality jobs for low-income and immigrant women are few, this studio discussion looks at how residents Lenore Hamilton, Lucy Vasquez and Dyanne Ladinne, developed an alternative to poorly paid cleaning and childcare jobs by creating the Lettuce Work Women's Cooperative. The discussion covers how the cooperative pulled East Palo Alto women together to create a produce growing and selling business that provided an opportunity for them to support their families as well as to learn self confidence, business skills and how to make decisions with others from different cultures and experiences. Produced by Louise McNeilly and directed by Judi Levine for Open Shutter Productions.

Presenter: Dyanne Ladine
Producer: Louise McNeilly
Running Time: 27 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

The 1983 election in East Palo Alto was not just a triumph for residents wanting their own city, but for tenants as well. The East Palo Alto Council of Tenants (EPACT) worked in coalition with the East Palo Alto Citizens Committee on Incorporation (EPPACI) to bring about not only cityhood, but a strong rent control law as well. This cable access production looks at the first four years of rent control in the new city. Produced by Tom Brudney, Sharon Samek & Roger Williams for the Center for Lay Lawyering at the Stanford Law School.

Presenter: Ruben Abrica
Producers: Tom Brudney, Sharon Samek,
Roger Williams
Running Time: 21 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

The City of East Palo Alto Rent Stabilization Board manages the rent control system to see that both landlords and tenants are treated fairly. This video explains the operation of the Board, that ensures landlords having the right to a fair return on their investment and tenants have rights that include just cause for eviction, proper facility maintenance and freedom from harassment. Using skits, the video sets forth the mutual responsibilities of the rent stabilization system. East Palo Alto has one of the strongest rent control systems in the state, and the video goes on to examine the impact of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act of 1995, a law supported by the landlord lobby to weaken rent control statewide. Produced by Ken Russell, Midpeninsula Access Corporation for the City of East Palo Alto Rent Stabilization Board.

Presenter: Elizabeth Jackson
Producer: Ken Russell
Running Time: 20 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

A specter is haunting East Palo Alto - the specter of a missing high school. Since Ravenswood High School closed over a quarter-century ago, the lack of a public high school has left a defining imprint on the community. This impact shows up in many ways, some more difficult to discern than others: early and long bus rides to other cities, increased dropout rates, decreased access for working parents and even “Dangerous Minds,” the feature film based loosely on a teacher’s experience with East Palo Alto students bused to Carlmont High in the City of Belmont. Until 1996 all East Palo Alto students went to high schools outside the community; the majority still do.

High School: Lost and Found takes a journey across this educational and emotional landscape. We begin with a hazy glimpse into mid-1970s Ravenswood High School, as it fights its best against being closed, continue through the making of a mural reflecting on this closure, and arrive in the present with high school returning after a generation’s absence in the form of the private Eastside College Preparatory School and the more recent East Palo Alto High School, a public charter school.

You can’t tell from the inane music, the bell-bottomed, Afro-ized stylings, or the surreal image of PE on top of Mt. Shasta, but this is about a high school fighting for its life. To comply with federal regulations and achieve racial balance at Ravenswood High School in the 70s, some Ravenswood High School students were assigned to be bused out, while students from outside the community could choose to voluntarily transfer in. To survive, Ravenswood would need to balance outflow and inflow so the student body did not drop below a critical threshold. “The Ravenswood Experience” was designed to recruit more outside students to transfer in, but the balance was not achieved and the student body shrank to 800, less than two-thirds capacity. By 1976, East Palo Alto’s only public high school was closed. There were too few students, and as it turned out, financial problems in the Sequoia Union High School District made it necessary to close a campus anyway. Though roughly made, if we read between the lines, this film provides a rare window into student life at Ravenswood as the school tried and failed to avoid its fate. Produced by Phil Arnot for Ravenswood High School Media Center.

Producer: Phil Arnot
Running Time: 30 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

The urban landscape of East Palo Alto has been enriched recently by a series of public murals created by the East Palo Alto Mural Arts Project (EPAMAP) and located at Ravenswood school sites. EPAMAP hires local teens to learn skills of mural making and the background research to develop mural subject matter. Working in collaboration with the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula, the EPAMAP began as a summer program both to respond to a lack of teen enrichment programs and employment opportunities and to create a public art legacy for East Palo Alto. One mural topic was Ravenswood High School and the significance of its closure to youth in the community. This video documents the process of making the mural and conveying what was achieved and learned. Produced by Sonya Clarke Herrera, with Rachel McIntire (camera) and Zachary Pogue (editing) for the East Palo Alto Mural Arts Project.

Producer: Sonya Clarke-Herrera
Running Time: 12 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

Exactly 20 years after the closure of Ravenswood, the private Eastside College Preparatory School opened in 1996 with eight students and no campus. Through the efforts of founders, parents and students, the school now has a 100% graduation and four-year college attendance rate in a community where close to half of the students do not finish high school. Hold Fast tells the story of this effort and of the dream of its founder, Chris Bischof, to create a setting where youth can be supported to reach for their aspirations. The school continues to grow, yet still remains tuition free. Produced by Meredyth Wilson.

Producer: Meredyth Wilson
Running Time: 29 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

East Palo Alto High School (EPAHS) is a charter high school that opened in fall of 2001. EPAHS is an innovative collaboration between the Ravenswood City School District (the school’s sponsor), the Stanford University School of Education and Aspire Public Schools. The school is small by design with a student body of 160. The video to be shown is a segment on East Palo Alto High School from an Annenberg Foundation series exploring “best practices” in education for smaller schools. Teaching and learning shown in the video are used as examples of some of the most effective educational practices that Annenberg found in their study.

Producer:
Running Time: 15 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

"Horror comes to the hood" in this all-local production. But "Freddy vs. Jason" east of Bayshore this is not. The rappers, artists, actors and musicians making up the creative team were perhaps a little too carried away to make a proper exploitation film. This self-described "horror comedy" hurdles down a plotline of supernatural revenge, but takes radical tangents into other dimensions of East Palo Alto. Not to be missed! See the most East Palo Alto film ever made at the EPA premiere! Written and directed by Teodros Hailye.

Producer: Teodros Hailye
Running Time: 55 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

For the first three years of the SASSY Digital Video program the student production groups were designated the Young Media Activist Crew (YMAC), reflecting the view of founding instructor, filmmaker Van Nguyen, that digital filmmaking was about both self-expression and self-empowerment, about looking at yourself and the community around you and using the tools of media to make change. In the words of Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire, filmmaking was about the “right of each individual to say their own words, to name the world.”

This program reflects the best of three years work from the Young Media Activist Crew, the first filmmaking program (using the new digital technologies) to ever exist East of Bayshore. Van inspired the students and held high expectations for them. During the final week of editing students would stay till 10:00 p.m. while their parents brought in pizza.

Now Van has racked up three years with YMAC and has decided to return to school to pursue an MFA in filmmaking. With a new instructor coming in, there will be a new curriculum coming with them and a new incarnation of the SASSY Digital Video course.
The YMAC phase has come to a close to make way for the next wave. Here, then, is the best of volumes 1, 2 and 3 of the Young Media Activist Crew. Please stay with us after the 45-minute screening as Van receives a special acknowledgement from her students.

The Films:
Lil’ Paypa, 4:27 (2000/2001) Sanipepa Mailimali, Van Nguyen. True Friends, 4:10 (2001/2002) Cherita Williams, Ebony Holland. Life is But a Dream 4:51 (2001/2002) Meyer Sivao Faasipa. 94303 5:00 (2002/2003) Liz Taylor, Mele MoiMoi, Kinia Pahulu, Soana Crocker. Da Youth N’ Art 9:00 (2002/2003) Martin Reyes, Vanessa Castillo,
Alberto Marquez, Sarah Ruiz, Aaron Robinson, Adriana Lopez, Aaron Rainer. K-Life 10:00(2002/2003) Dana Vasquez, Isaac Stevenson and Ricardo Calderon.
Taking Steps to Change 5:30 (2002/2003) Tama Si’I Tonga, Filipine Helu

(Additional information on the films and filmmakers will be available at the screening)

Producer: Various
Running Time: 45 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

But the homeless man who waited at 5:00 a.m. for Manley’s Donuts in Whiskey Gulch to open, now waits, still homeless, in front of Starbucks in downtown Palo Alto. Men and women with bags and packs still slip off the sidewalk to the westbound overpass to go down into the wooded areas by the 101 on-ramp for shelter. Relatively speaking, great wealth is still adjacent to extreme poverty. This program looks at the divide that still exists and the divide that is being crossed.

This documentary focuses on three homeless people in Silicon Valley, living in the East Palo Alto and Menlo Park communities. Their stories, told in a series of interviews, reveal wisdom and insight about a subject that many people choose to ignore. Poverty and homeless culture have grown rapidly, as nearby wealthy communities continue to thrive. This film highlights the struggle to find cultural identity by people on the streets surrounded by American affluence. Produced by Daniel Hedden at Foothill College.

Producer: Daniel Hedden
Running Time: 17 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

At the height of the dot com boom, “Secrets of Silicon Valley” took a look at two issues not making the headlines. One story is set at Plugged In, East Palo Alto, as Executive Director Magda Escobar faces the challenge of providing access to computers and the Internet for those on the sidelines of the information technology explosion. Elsewhere in the Valley, temporary worker Raj Jayadev is finding his own secrets behind the pristine surface of Silicon Valley. Working for Manpower, the world’s largest temp agency, in an HP assembly plant, Raj discovers the reality of poor, unsafe working conditions for primarily immigrant temporary workers. As mainstream media waxed eloquent over stocks and companies, many of which would soon become worthless, “Secrets of Silicon Valley” was the first and the only film to take a clear-eyed look at the societal impact of technological change. Produced and Directed by Alan Snitow & Deborah Kaufman. East Palo Alto Premiere

Producer: Alan Snitow & Deborah Kaufman
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios

From the East Palo Alto baylands, the white crystal piles of the East Bay salt works can be seen and between these two shores are the multihued salt evaporation ponds that ring the South Bay. John Shed, the main character in Charles Koppelman’s “Dumbarton Bridge,” is a salt pond worker, and so the film is set in this place apart, and reflects a state of mind as well as a physical landscape, a “moody in-between space” equivalent to the emotional limbo of the film’s characters. A significant amount of the film is also shot in the late Whiskey Gulch, the urban equivalent of a zone apart, a space at the margins. To our knowledge, “Dumbarton Bridge” is the only feature film shot in East Palo Alto. Let us know if you find another one.

Dumbarton Bridge (1999)

The writer/director has provided some descriptions of the film combined below:

John Shed is a black "waterman" who tends desolate and lonely salt evaporation ponds in the south San Francisco Bay. Played by Tom Wright (“Barbershop”), Shed, a Vietnam Veteran, lives isolated, outside his skin. A physically intense but fragile relationship with his white live-in girl friend implodes when Shed's 20 year-old Vietnamese daughter, Mihn, arrives from Vietnam, locates him, and ignites dormant emotional fires. Father and daughter struggle with each other and their inner conflicts amidst California’s multi-cultural edge cities as they both begin a parallel search for ethnic identity and personal belonging. Ultimately Jack, Shed's best friend, leads him to a group of black men who work at living authentic, signifying lives, among whom Shed may find redemption. A drama about identity, belonging, and exile set to a classic jazz and R&B soundtrack, with stunning visuals of moody waterscapes at the margins of Silicon Valley. Written, directed and produced by Charles Koppelman. East Palo Alto Premiere

Producers: Charles Koppelman, Leah Stauffer, Doria Summa, Tom Hill
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Source / Filmmaker Bios