Posts Tagged ‘documentary’

broadcast on Making Contact

Mauton Akran is a senior at Oakland Technical High School. He moved to Oakland, California from Nigeria when he was six and he hasn’t been back there since. He’s been teased by black Americans for the darkness of his skin, he’s shared their experiences of racism, and he’s developed a passion for hip-hop.

This 27-minute documentary explores the tensions between African immigrants and black Americans through Mauton’s eyes.

Listen to Part 1

Listen to Part 2

Jaime Jennet likes to say that she and her wife Laura Fitch are rewriting the “hetero script”.

Jaime is femme and Laura is butch.

Laura does most of the traditional “man” stuff. She’s the one who takes out the garbage and mows the lawn behind their home in Oakland. Jaime does most of the cooking and frequently goes on baking binges.

But it’s Jaime who’s the primary breadwinner. She’s the program coordinator of a women’s health center in Walnut Creek where she’s being groomed to take over for her boss. And now that they’ve decided to have their first baby, it’s Laura who’s pregnant

The feminist and gay rights movements of their mother’s generation allows them to pick and choose what aspects of the nuclear family and which feminist teachings they want to adhere to.

“We play with tradition. We buck tradition. The two of us have done it with this understanding of what’s come before us. And so in the ways that we choose to be traditional, in the ways that we choose to use feminism to choose what our mother’s were fighting against, is because we now have that choice,” Laura.

This photo essay documents the choices Jaime and Laura have made.

The project was shot with black and white film between February and April, 2008.

published by the Oakland Tribune

EL CERRITO, California – El Cerrito High School Junior Kenneth Thornton, 16, had switched his cell phone to vibrate and stashed it in the pocket of his baggy Rocca Wear jeans. When it went off in Jim Perrero’s Friday morning history class, he ducked under his desk.

“Who is this?” Thornton whispered, “I’m gonna call you back.”

Sliding back up into his chair, Thornton said he had to take the call.

“I didn’t know that number it could have been important.”

But answering a cell phone at El Cerrito High is now risky business. The school’s 1,250 students were greeted on the first day of school with warnings that their phones would be confiscated if they were in view at any time during school hours. (more…)