Re-Take Oakland filmmakers Corinne Manabat Cueva, Jay Gash, Lucy Saephan, and teo octavia presented four films. With their guest speakers and community partners, they held deeply engaging discussions relating to the personal stories of Oaklanders with audience members.

• Rooted in Resilience (teo octavia) focused on refugee and advocate Danny Thongsy as he fights against his deportation and for the rights of Southeast Asians. Guest speakers and community partners Lan Nguyen and Jun Hamamoto (Stand4Danny) centered the themes of grassroots activism and advocacy, Southeast Asian refugee and immigrant stories, displacement and deportation, and mobilization and movement building.

• When the Garden Comes (Jay Gash) explored their family home and garden in North Oakland through three generations and how it can be a source of memories. Guest speakers and community partners Creasie Jordan and Keith Battle (BAVC) centered the themes of gardening and land for the black and brown community, defining legacy, and family histories and traditions.

• Synchronized (Corinne Manabat Cueva) embraced 5 women of color as they collectively reflect about their experiences living and thriving in Oakland. Guest speakers and community partners Carmen Wong and Grace Patterson (BAVC/Reel Stories) centered the themes of expectations about Oakland; personal identity, place, and space; and the impacts of being creatives.

• My Name is Lai (Lucy Saephan) drew a portrait of her Mien American grandmother as a cultural bearer carrying generational wisdom connecting her experiences in both Laos and Oakland. Guest speakers and community partners Lai and Muong Saephan (Lao Iu Mien Cultural Association) centered the themes of the Mien community in Oakland, intergenerational relationships and legacy, and the community’s future.

Re-Take Oakland filmmakers Corinne Manabat Cueva and Lucy Saephan discussed the relationship between culture, ecology, and personal storytelling at the 2021 AAAS conference. They screened their two new short films: My Name is Lai, featuring Lucy’s Mien grandmother talking about her experiences of life, and Synchronized featuring women of color discussing their relationship to living in Oakland.

With Ethnocine, we co-sponsored a Bad Feminists Making Films event at MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana), at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association with support from Rhiza Collective.

Tricia Creason-Valencia—Changing Boundaries: The History of San Jose tells the stories of working people, political leaders and dreamers who built the city of San Jose.

Elena Herminia Guzman—Smile4Kime explores mental health, race, and policing through the eyes and experience of a young African American woman dealing with the trauma of sexual assault.

Laura Menchaca Ruiz—Hay Betl7em, co-directed by Khader Handal, supplements occupation-centric media representations of Palestinians through Bethlehemites telling their stories.

Nadia Shihab—Jaddoland follows the filmmaker’s return to her Texas hometown to visit her mother, an artist from Iraq, to witness the beauty and solace that emerge through her creative process.

Filmmakers discussed how their work addresses feminist intersectional analyses, including race, class, sexuality, nationality, gender, and/or religion at all stages of the filmmaking process.

We presented at the annual conference of the Association for Asian American Studies with a panel titled: “Embracing West Asia (the Middle East) in Asian American Identity in Media Representation.”

We screened film clips by Ina Adele Ray, Sabereh Kashi, Jennifer Crystal Chien, and Raeshma Razvi on personal stories of family, friends, and community leaders of immigrant communities from Vietnam, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan.

We spoke on the cultural and historic relationship between West Asia (Middle East) and East and South Asian people. We supported thinking of Asian American more broadly to be inclusive of Middle Easterners, as a voluntary multiple identity in addition to other identities.

With support from California Humanities, Neda Nobari Foundation, and in collaboration with Kehilla Synagogue and the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, we presented three filmmakers from the Middle East who engaged audience members in short film screenings and community dialogues.

Michal Aviad, Sabereh Kashi, and Itir Yakar focused on personal storytelling as a way to bring greater understanding of communities from Palestine, Israel, Armenia, Turkey, Iran, and the U.S.

Outreach partners included: IC3, Jewish Film Institute, ONiT, City of Oakland Cultural Affairs, and SFFILM.

Two sold out events took place on February 17th and 18th in Oakland, California and brought together community members of diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds. 

We co-promoted a panel discussion produced by IC3: Incubating Creativity, Community & Civic Engagement, featuring Ina Adele Ray and Sabereh Kashi presenting their films-in-progress and sharing personal and family stories on global conflict in Iran, Vietnam, and the U.S.

• Sabereh Kashi—Home Yet Far Away An Iranian American reconciles two homelands in conflict. She explores the evolution of immigrant identity amidst stigma against Iran and Islam in American culture.

• Jennifer Crystal Chien—Waiting for Bekir An immigrant from Turkey lives an ordinary life in the U.S. while pursuing the American Dream. He is one amongst a community of international middle class immigrants.

• Raeshma Razvi—Sailor, Sufi, Spy Robert Darr is a white American who follows an unusual path of being asked to serve as the Sufi spiritual leader of an Afghan refugee community in the U.S.

As part of the United States of Asian America Festival, we showcased four filmmakers in a panel workshop focused on personal stories in Asian American filmmaking, moderated by RJ Lozada.

This event was presented by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, funded by Grants for the Arts and SFAC