When ‘the House Is on Fire’, Give Teenagers a Camera
It seems apt that a room full of teenagers introduced their documentaries about ableism, gentrification, and racism gathered in a space built to memorialize a time where this country’s civil liberties failed a community wholesale. Our documentary filmmaking high school program held a special screening of films exploring civil liberties at the Japanese American National Museum’s Democracy Center — a room that exists, as one speaker put it, because the institution itself “serves as a reminder of how this country and democracy failed its people.”
The screening was the summation of a semester of work. Seventy-five students from Van Nuys High School, Westbrook Academy, and Renaissance School for the Arts in Long Beach teamed up to make short documentaries with a focus on their own communities’ oral history.
That connection was underlined at the beginning of the semester long program when every participating class watched Film Independent’s Fellow Ann Kaneko’s Manzanar Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust and sat down with the director to talk about Japanese American internment camps during World War II, as a way of providing them with a framework for their own explorations through film.
The students were ushered along by their teachers and hand selected mentors, all Film Independent Fellows, who visited each classroom throughout the spring semester, walking students through a curriculum built around documentary and oral history. The program offered them training on documentary filmmaking techniques while providing them with first-hand experience in the power of cinema to explore issues of vital social importance and express their own point of view to the larger community. The museum setting at the end was the perfect stage to highlight how history is not settled, and that the students in the room are its next chapter.
That was made evident through the films and In the conversation following the screening of their work, when he young filmmakers offered us a very fresh and hopeful outlook through their own voices: They left us with a feeling that this generation, raised on social media, COVID classrooms, and a questionable economic future, know all too well how to handle the world that has been handed to them. These high schoolers have grown up fast, but the films they made showed how they plan to step up to the plate and engage in our complicated world.
The post-screening discussion also showed just how much the program both pushed the students as well as broughtout their inner artists. Editing arguments turned into two-day debates about how to represent “systematic oppression.” A student researching Scientology for a film ostensibly about civil liberties stumbled, almost by accident, into a meditation on authenticity and social masking. A documentary about the 1984 and upcoming Olympics turned into a fight over a single word, “cleanup,” after an interview subject argued the term was really about making unhoused residents “disappear” for the cameras.
Zion Smith Vargas, describing a documentary made after attending a No Kings protest, told the room that speaking up matters. ” The more you open your mouth, the more you speak up and use your voice, you’re going to be alright”. Paulina Cummings, reflecting on why she made a film about music and community, said she believes “through art, you can not only express yourself, but also advocate for civil liberties for yourself and for your environment.” These lines weren’t fed to the students. They came to these conclusions by interacting with their subject matter, their collaborators, and through the art itself.
When given a camera, an opportunity, as well some guidance these students found their voice, and it turned out they had plenty to say. We’re sharing five of the films exclusively here:
A City on Display
Raquel Grande, Andrea Baptist, Diora Smith-Vargas, Alexandra Umana, Mellanie Solis, and Reece Nicholson
Westbrook Academy, 12th Grade
The System: Ableism
Eden Hardwick and Liam Klipstine
Van Nuys High School, 9th Grade
The Art of Becoming
Daniel Arteaga-Rodriguez, Joaquin Lopez, Iris Esquivias, and Addie Transue
Renaissance High School for the Arts, 11th Grade
The Right Word
Harlye J. Einbinder, Epique Jackson, Esther Ortiz, Layla Green, Jayleen Santilon-Solrzano, Angel Bernal-Ramirez, Ella Gemme, and Daisy Gonzales-Ordoze
Van Nuys High School, 9th Grade
The Air We Breathe
Oliver Bryant, Jhet Aquino-Medrano, and Ingrid Garcia
Renaissance High School for the Arts, 11th Grade
This profound documentary exploration program was supported by Snap Foundation and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
To see more exceptional films created by high schoolers, check out our upcoming Future Filmmakers Showcase on 7/24. Reserve your tickets here:
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