As our country experiences a wave of evictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, many residents are experiencing homelessness for the first time in their lives. Not everyone has a contingency plan. People can find themselves precariously living in dangerous unfamiliar environments when lacking resources and information. Homelessness can be a lonesome journey. But through community, advocacy, friendship and love, these films shed light on solutions unhoused residents have found for themselves to build home on the streets. Build community. Build civic love.
The film screening is paired with a panel discussion of grassroots organizers working with unhoused communities, sharing knowledge on tactics to better survive on the streets, solutions to housing our neighbors and how to bring healing to our community. After the discussion, the audience will be prompted to do the healing work for other community members through the act of Love and Care. Participants will be given an opportunity to write a love note and assemble a care package for unhoused residents in Chicago, Berkeley, and Oakland.
Photo: By Yesica Prado.
Panelists
Needa Bee
Activist, Co-Founder of The Village #FeedthePeople
Ian Cordova Morales
Homeless Rights Advocate
Toan Nguyen
Unhoused Activist Artist
Yesica Prado (Moderator)
Activist and Filmmaker
Annyliss Quinde
Filmmaker
Isaacnezer K. Njugun
Urban Planner, Nairobi, Kenya
Films
Makers of History
USA | 2019 | 8 mins. | Directed by Ryan Stopera
The Golden Eagles of Ginew is part of a documentary series by Free Truth, a media company using art as a tool for liberation. Free Truth received grant funding from CURA at the University of Minnesota to produce a documentary series on the housing crisis in Minneapolis. For the final episode of the series, Free Truth Co-Director and filmmaker Ryan Stopera partnered with The Golden Eagles of Ginew to explore what home means to Native American youth, while interviewing houseless community members at the encampment across the street from the American Indian Center, where the Golden Eagles program resides.
Homeless First
USA | 2019 | 28 mins. | Directed by Anka Karewicz, Travis Schimer
HOMELESS FIRST follows the Berkeley encampment known as “First They Came for the Homeless,” a group of houseless individuals fighting for the right to live in tents in a self-organized community. After BART evicts the group from the space they occupy, the residents of the camp go to court to fight back. Several camp members share their personal stories, views on homeless activism, and ideas about organizing a self-governed, horizontally structured community.
Quarantine Diary
USA | 2020 | 7 mins. | Directed by Yesica Prado
Photojournalist Yesica Prado shares her personal experience of living in an RV during quarantine in Berkeley.
reimagining the city, as our own
USA | 2020 | 21 mins. | Directed by Irene Gustafson
Who has the right to the city? Who is allowed to linger on its streets, to see oneself in its landscapes, included and represented in its conceptions of ‘the public’? Through the creative examination of ‘hostile design,’ this video imagines public space as attuned to the needs and uses of marginally housed and houseless SF residents. The film is a collaboration between San Francisco based filmmaker Irene Gustafson and Tenderloin based and community embedded social practice ensemble, Skywatchers.
Partners
