Stories in Action

“How I See It - My Place,” an exhibit of photographs and writing by California teens. The online gallery showcases work of 200 California teen city and town explorers. Find inspiration in their vision and take a second look at the world around you. Free, downloadable materials let you replicate the project with your group. More.

“Forget Me Not,” a California Documentary Project film, now in production, tells the story of the Aids Memorial in San Francisco, which began as a landscaped grove maintained by volunteers and is now is a national memorial.

Emmy-nominated director and producer Andy Abrahams Wilson is very excited about the film, but needs funds to complete it. You can help by attending a benefit on Thursday, June 11, 6 to 8 pm, at the Marine’s Memorial Club & Hotel Ballroom, 609 Sutter Street, San Francisco. Armistead Maupin, of “Tales of the City” fame, is the guest speaker. Honorary co-chairs of the event are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and State Senator Mark Leno. Find our more and sign up.

Arthur Dong’s “Hollywood Chinese” a high-spirited look at the ways the Chinese have been imagined in the movies, from silent classics to contemporary blockbusters, premieres nationally on American Masters on PBS on Wednesday, May 27. Check local listings for times in your area.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a nice story yesterday morning about “A Choice of Weapons,” an entirely youth-produced Council-supported film about the impact of redevelopment on San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point community. You can read about the film project and then go and see the film this coming Monday at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco. There are two showings: 6:30 and 8:30 pm. Come out and support these amazing young people. See film trailer.

Congratulations to filmmakers Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez, whose California Documentary Project film “Going On 13” just won the award for Best Documentary at the La Femme Film Festival in Los Angeles. Alert to Bay Area moviegoers: The film is being shown this weekend as part of the San Francisco Documentary Festival: 7 pm, Sunday, November 2, 2008, Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley.

“A Choice of Weapons,” an entirely youth-produced feature film about the impact of redevelopment on San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point community, will premiere in San Francisco on Wednesday, October 29 at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th Street. The film project is one of eight funded by the Council as part of its How I See It: Youth Digital Filmmakers program. More.

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Two immigrant communities in Los Angeles — Ethiopian and Armenian — are the subjects of a new exhibit of photographs by Ara Oshagan at the Los Angeles Center for Experimental Art & Architecture. The exhibit is an outgrowth of Oshagan’s work on two separate California Story Fund projects. “The photos invite the reader to consider questions like, what is identity? What is community? And how the two are related,” Oshagan said. The exhibit runs from September 26 to October 17, 2008. An opening reception will be held on Friday, September 26 from 7 to 10 pm.

As part of the Council’s How I See It: Youth Digital Filmmakers program, a group of San Francisco East Bay teens from Ally Action, which works to insure schools are safe for youth regardless of sexual orientation, created a film about the absence of LGBTQ history in California schools. Their 30-minute film, “Don’t Erase My History,” already screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, will have its Bay Area premiere at a benefit event at the Metreon, San Francisco, on October 11, 2008. Funds raised will help complete and distribute the film. Find out more.

More than 300 teens in 21 California libraries are exploring, photographing and writing about their everyday environments in an innovative 10-week Council program – How I See It: My Place — based on the ideas of John Stilgoe, a Harvard landscape history professor. Most of the projects are currently underway and Angie Miraflor, teen services librarian at the San Jose Public Library, recently sent us some photographs taken by her group. See photographs.

Live in the L.A. area? The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is screening films from the Council’s California Stories projects on Sunday, June 8 starting at 11 am. Filmmakers Arthur Dong (“Hollywood Chinese”) and Jon Wilkman (“Chicano Rock”), among others, will be there to discuss their films and show clips. More information.

Teens from Mt. Shasta High School and Happy Camp High School will screen their film — “Voices Between the Mountains: Coming of Age in the Siskiyous” — about growing up in a small rural town — at College of the Sikiyous in Weed on Thurs., June 19, at 7:30 pm and at Klamath-Siskiyou Art Center in Happy Camp on Fri., June 27, at 9 pm. The students will discuss their filmmaking experiences following both screenings. The Happy Camp screening will be preceded by an organic dinner at 5 p.m. followed by an art opening. The film was created as part of the Council’s How I See It: Youth Digital Filmmakers program.

“Going On 13,” a California Documentary Project film about the growth and challenges of four preteen girls of color in Oakland, has been selected for screening at the Silverdocs: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in the Washington, DC area. More.

Radio broadcast: “Prison Town, USA,” a California Documentary Project film about the effect of the prison boom on the small town of Susanville, Calif., now has a radio version, which will be airing on a number of stations from July 30 to Aug. 6. More.

Do You Represent an Arts Organization in California? Learn valuable proposal writing skills and hear insider tips on how to apply to the James Irvine Foundation’s new Creative Connections Fund at free workshops in various California locations in June. To find out more and to register, visit the Foundation Center’s website.

Drug abuse among teens, cliques on campus and dealing with ethnic differences are among the topics of a series of films made by teens in a video production class at Lodi High School as part of the Council’s Youth Digital Filmmakers program. You can catch the films at 6 pm, Tuesday, May 13, at the Student Union, California State University, Stanislaus, 1 University Circle, Turlock; and at 9 am, Saturday, May 17, at Lodi Stadium 12 Cinemas, 109 North School Street., Lodi. More.