We All Rise Up: Student Equity Film Festival 2021

By Angela Greco

a_greco511@yahoo.com

 

In order to further drive conversations, the Office of Student Equity has organized their first inaugural film festival, entitled “We All Rise Up”. The idea is to use film as a vehicle to promote discussion among the City College community.

The 3 selected film documentaries are based on student’s first hand experience maneuvering challenges of educational inequity, race in education, access, transfer and retention. 

Professor Kyle Hill, who heads the program said the films were thoughtfully chosen to highlight “racially minoritized students [who are] experiencing the largest gaps in those areas.” 

For instance, the first film, “Personal Statement” follows highschool students navigating the college admission process. One major reason they emphasized this film was to encourage the community to consider the barriers that students face.

As Hill said, the films are aimed towards “building awareness around the strengths and resiliency and perseverance that students exhibit to even make it into our classroom in the first place.”

Hill pointed out that the ultimate goal is to feed these discussions (which are scheduled on Canvas on dates following each film’s showing), to create inclusive spaces to openly share and reflect on personal experience, and to open the door to further understanding.

 

Description: “We All Rise Up: Leveraging Collective Knowledge and Social Capital to Improve Racial Equity and Achievement at CCSF: Film is an art form that can touch our lives through a variety of senses and can be a vehicle to deliver powerful messages; the Office of Student Equity’s film festival is an opportunity where advocacy for educational equity meets the arts. Our selection of documentaries for the fall 2021 semester intends to support the CCSF community (i.e. students, staff, faculty, and administrators) with framing and advancing conversations about promising practices for supporting student access to, retention in, and transfer from our institution.”

 

Next convo on nov 17th!