Winning students’ films explore Black Panthers and homelessness

By Anthony Beron

A 17-year-old Skyline sophomore’s video based on an R & B song by Moria Moore that uses footage of the history of Black Panthers won the Judges Award last week at  Project YouthView.

Lily Yu, a Chinese immigrant who plays jazz bass, created the R&B film Limitations, which revisits the Black Panther Party’s lasting presence in West Oakland.  She won a $500 cash prize, a Kindle and and a private screening of her film and luncheon at the Dolby studios in San Francisco.

Organized by Alternatives in Action, Project YouthView, which took place last Thursday at the Alameda Theatre in Alameda, screened films by nine finalists. “Human,” a film by Fremont High School graduates Andy To and Dara So, which tells the story of a local homeless man, won the Audience award.

For Yu, film was a new venture. “I really love music,” Yu says, “I’m in my school’s jazz band. I had just started in film, and I didn’t know much about it, so I decided to do a music video.”

Since filming Limitations, she’s contributed to three videos for KQED chronicling the Oakland dropout crisis.

The Skyline High School student came to film through the Bay Area Video Coalition, or BAVC, a group that organizes classes, events, after-school programs, and resources to help students. Yu found her inspiration in BAVC member, Moria Moore, who has since moved to Los Angeles.

“[Limitations] talks about African- Americans, and it came from Moria Moore’s album, History in the Streets,” Yu says. “I used found footage from documentaries about the Black Panthers, and I decided to focus the video on that. You’ll see [Moore] in the spots that the Black Panthers were in many years ago,” she told Oakland Magazine.

Yu said she did not show her family the video until it was completed, as it was so different from anything she’d created before. “I didn’t know if they’d understand,” she said. But they did.

Her BAVC mentors helped her shape her story. ” I had to write out locations for each shot—‘Where do I imagine this part of the song?’”

In and Out of Shadows: A Play About Undocumented Youth Hits Home

by Romanalyn Inocencio

Watching In and Out of Shadows at the Marsh Theater in San Francisco was like sitting in my living room listening to my Mom. The Filipina mother in the story threatened like my mother, giving you a choice of what household instrument you can get hit with.

It hit home because I’m Filipina and these life stories — focused on fears about the police, stress over grades and college — reflect the anxieties of my undocumented cousins and friends.

Some significant details are different of course. The stories of crossing the border into the United States from Mexico, when one kid had to be drugged because he could not learn his fake name,and another had to crawl through the sewers, are harrowing.

The musical builds on a familiar theme: college application.  In it, the undocumented teens are preparing their personal statements for an AB 540 conference at UC Berkeley (AB 540 allows DREAMers to attend California colleges at in-state rates).

 We meet Angel, who arrived in the US alone via a sewer when he was 13. And Juan who, as a determined six-year-old, had to be drugged with cough syrup during the crossing because he adamantly refused to take his cousin’s name as his own. We watch a newly urbanized “vato loco” (crazy dude in Spanish) teaching an undocumented Chinese friend how to speak street Spanish.

Running through the entire musical is the fear of deportation. Many families in the  play  have deceptive status – undocumented parents who lie to their children about their papers (often telling their children they have papers, when they don’t)  and who live in constant fear of separation.

Even under AB 540 or President Obama’s recent two-year deportation deferral program for certain undocumented youth, students who get to stay may suddenly be left alone with nobody to take care of them. The diverse group of young actors, many whom are directly affected by the issue, mix English, Spanish, Tagalog and other languages as they examine the unwieldy human effects of this messy political issue.

Why Oakland’s Proposed Graffiti Law Goes Too Far

by Breannie Robinson

Banksy’s graffiti  — two English policemen kissing, an Israeli soldier getting frisked by a little girl — showing at Art Miami-Basel this week—sells for  as much as $266,000 and it’s political, provocative, and creative expression.

Graffiti, as Banksy and other artists would say, derives its MEANING from the street. Location is central. So would Oakland punish Banksy and the owner of the building on which it is displayed?

A new proposed city ordinance would punish both. It goes too far: it would impose fines on graffiti artists, on their parents if they’re minors, and also on property owners who don’t clean it up. The ordinance would basically make  tagging or graffiti a misdemeanor instead of an “infraction,” which would make it possible to be jailed for displaying graffiti. You must be kidding, jailed for having your property defaced?

Even if it’s an increasing problem in Oakland, (and Nancy Nadel led the move for more punishment, so West Oakland is targeted), why does it make sense for the building owner to be punished for what another person has done? Why should he or she be forced to clean it up or worse, be fined?

I think it’s laudable for Oakland officials to try to control the aesthetics of their city but it’s ridiculous to fine building owners who have no control over the tagging on their property. It might even discourage people from buying property in Oakland.

Graffiti has always been controversial: it can be viewed as “blight” or as “art.” The style of graffiti art can be seen as scruffy, ugly illegal drawings on buildings but in certain areas, graffiti is seen as portraits of real life which enhance a neighborhood’s beauty.

For example, in New York, there are large memoirs on the side of buildings and no one has fined the owners for the art on their walls. In fact, there is a PAID tour of Williamburg, Brooklyn which centers on graffiti.

Many famous graffiti artists who exhibit their art in galleries had their start on city walls: besides Banksy, Blek le Rat (who exhibited at the Tate Modern in London), Konstantin Dimopoulos (who painted Blue Trees in Seattle), Peter Ferrari PLF and Barry McGee, among others.

I wonder if this is another case in which Oakland is overreacting, because  we are in Oakland and “Gang Graffiti”(tagging to show that a block “belongs” or is “territory” for a specific gang)  is seen as threatening to law and order. Whether that is the case or not, punishing the owners of the building is taking things too far.

Adios Graffiti Art: Mack Walls Painted White, Grey, Colorless

Adios Graffiti: Mack Painted White, Grey, Bland, Colorless

Its graffiti art gave Mack pizazz. But Wednesday, a crew started painting over the bright orange, blue, green, purple, letters.
Even one teacher sighed, “I really liked the graffiti art. It was colorful, symbolic of school culture.” But McClymonds is preparing for Western Association of Schools and Colleges review of accreditation. WASC criteria passed in 2010  require that schools be “free of graffiti and clean.”

 

****** The lockers still carry graffiti art, as of now.