Toward a More Perfect Rebellion: Multiracial Student Activism at UCLA | Q&A with filmmakers

Good evening. Welcome. Um, my name is Beandrea. I'm a film programmer here at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. And it's my pleasure to welcome you to the home of our programs, the Billy Wilder Theater. Um, some of you know I like to do a little query in the beginning sometimes. Uh, how many of you are UCLA alums in the audience tonight? Let's Okay. All right. Give it up for the alumni. Thank you uh for being here. And how many of you is this your first time here at the archive? Okay, I love that. Awesome. Well, welcome and also welcome to our returning uh visitors. Um tonight's program is amazing and you're really very smart to come tonight. Um so I just want to welcome you. Uh this tonight's program is called This Bitter but Beautiful Earth and it's the first screening in our two night series Toward a More Perfect Rebellion: Multi-racial Student Activism at UCLA. And tonight's program begins with five short films running approximately 80 minutes total and then we'll take a brief 10-minute intermission uh followed by a Q&A with some of the filmmakers that are here tonight. And um this is going to be moderated by our series programmer, Professor Joselyn Luckett. Um yes, let's clap for Joselyn. Um and we will end the evening with um a wonderful documentary uh called A Crushing Love. Um and that runs for about 58 minutes. So don't don't leave after the Q&A. You are in for a treat. We save we saved the best for last. Um okay. Okay, so let me do a little bit of housekeeping and then I'll bring Joselyn up to formally introduce the program. Um, this free screening and all of our year-round public programming is made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor and our partners here at the Hammer Museum. I want to give a special thanks to the community partners um who've supported this event. UCLA Center for Ethnic Communications, of course, and um that's in the Asian-American Studies Center and the UCLA Chuco Studies Research Center for their ongoing support as well. I also want to give a huge shout out to the wonderful archive staff, many of whom are here tonight. Uh truly none of the programs would be possible without our entire team. Um I'd also like to acknowledge any of the board members of the archive who are may be in the audience tonight as well as um thank um specifically um Maya Montenezuckler who is the person who pitched this idea to our programming team. So, this wouldn't also have happened without Maya. Um, and thank you all, uh, team for being there. Let's give everyone a round of applause. So, um, in terms of housekeeping, you're welcome to take photo, video, um, have your phone out during this portion, but not during the films. Um, and you know, before or after, but just not during the films. We asked you to really put your phones away and just be here present in the room. Um, and if you'd like to share about your experience tonight, um, you can tag us at UCLA FTV archive on social media. That's UCLA FTV archive. Um, bonus points if you put the location is the Billy Wilder Theater. Um, plus, um, you can learn more about, uh, our upcoming series at cinema.ucla.edu, edu as well as sign up for our um wonderful newsletter. And if you're on Letterbox and you know what Letterbox is, leave a review. U mention you saw tonight's program here because that helps kind of spread the word. Also, um yeah, so let me introduce Joselyn. Um Joselyn is the guest programmer for this series. Joselyn Janine Lucket is the author of Toward a More Perfect Rebellion: Multi-racial Media Activism made in LA. It's a dynamic history of UCLA's ethnic communications program, whose participants transformed American film culture in the 1970s and beyond. For this groundbreaking work, she received the inaugural advocate award from Dean Selene Perinia Shimizu. Um, yeah, Dean Seline. um UCLA's TFT 20 at UCLA's TFT 2025 convocation. She's an associate professor of cinema studies at NYU and a contributing editor at Film Quarterly. And she also serves on the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, a former staff writer for the Steve Harvey Show and Queen Sugar. She also wrote wrote the original teleplay love song directed by Julie Dash for MTV. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, NYU, Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Pennsylvania. And she's currently researching a book on the life and career of director Stan Lean. Now, when I started reading her book, which some of you bought and got signed out in the front, um I flipped to the acknowledge acknowledgements page first, which is something I typically do when I read books. Um, and I saw that her acknowledgement page were there were eight full pages long. And um, that's really rare in a book. Um, and that told me immediately that Jocelyn is someone who is generous, deeply rooted in community, and a joy to collaborate with. And I was absolutely right. Um, working on her, working with her on this program has been a true pleasure. and um her scholarship really unlocks like a crucial missing piece of of LA's independent film history and her passion for this work is really infectious. So without further ado, let's welcome Jocelyn to the podium. Um you guys caught that uh Beyondrea's last name is July and I just keep vibing on hotter than Beyondrea July. You know I'm a Stevie Wonder person. Um welcome everyone. It's so good to have you here. This is such a special night and the fact that it's finally arrived. Um my hope once finishing the book was to bring it to this place first. So it's it's really wonderful. I'm just going to give some brief comments to kind of contextualize um the films that you're about to see. So the program in this film school on this campus that came to be known as the ethnocommunications program in 1970 was a pilot affirmative action program. I said it. Affirmative action program initially organized by Scottish film chair Colin Young and directed by the first black film professor hired at UCLA film school, Elazo Taylor. They began meeting in the 6869 school year as the media urban crisis committee, MUK, named such because the University of California President Charles Hitch had recently called for every school in the UC system to come up with programs to address what he called the urban crisis impacting communities of color in the wake of the assassination of the King assassination and rebellions in cities like Watts, Newark, and Detroit. The first class of the Muk program, and one of the original Mother Muckers is here. Uh you'll hear from him in in a little bit. Um Rockusly called themselves the Mother Muckers. And they included filmmakers like Montuma Sparsa, Richard Wells, Brian Mietta, Luis Garca, Sandra Sunrising Johnson, later Osawa, Yasu Osawa, and the late Danny Quan to name a few. This initial group played a role in recruiting the subsequent classes who came in the fall of 1970 when the name of the MUK program became the ethnommunications program. These student filmmakers were also helped by a small handful of filmmakers, film students of color who had enrolled before the program. And that includes students like Sylvia Morales, who you'll hear from later. Um, and graduate teaching assistants David Garcia, Charles Bernett, and Betty Chen. The ethno filmmakers body of work filming their communities with love, care, and nuance across this city and county from Compton to Boil Heights to Little Tokyo and even Westwood changed the face of film making over the decade of the 1970s and beyond. One more time, the film making community produced by this the film making produced by this these UCLA filmmakers of color deserves to be centered in any study of American cinema, especially any study of the so-called 70s picture, a decade that dominates film studies and countless cinema tech retrospectives of American cinema across the world. Now, for clarification, the black filmmakers coming out of UCLA were in the mid 1980s referred to by Dr. Clyde Taylor as the LA Rebellion. He wrote about and passionately programmed the black diasporic women and men from UCLA, including Julie Dash, Highly Germa, Billy Woodbury, Barman McCulla, Aliy Sharon Larkin, Zenibu, Irene Davis, who you'll see tomorrow. Um, and who's here tonight. Um and thankfully these filmmakers in large part due to the earlier efforts of Taylor, Tony Kade Bombara, Inangela Masila to Show me Gabriel and then decades later efforts from this archive and new generations of scholars like Allison Nadia Field and Jacqueline Stewart. These filmmakers have had an extraordinary kind of resurgence and renaissance this last since since the retrospective that took place here in 2011. So that's that's so important and it's so it's such a beautiful kind of circle to be back here um 15 or so years later. So when I was a graduate student catching up with this rebellion resurgence, I started to wonder um but what about the Asian-American filmmakers? What about the Chuco and Native American filmmakers? They were showing up in the margins, but I I I wanted to know more. And I'm an ethnic studies graduate from UC Berkeley, so my professors would be rolling in their graves if they knew I didn't do that comparative um cross-racial analysis. So that became my desire to expand the conversation and looked cross-raially at these filmmakers who worked together, trained together, crewed sometimes together, and took stands for each other's causes in that decade. And that became the idea of this more perfect rebellion, a wider rebellion that remembered the multi-racial insurgent roots of the original ethnommunications program. So tonight we'll get to see the fruit of those roots um in this selection of films and also tomorrow night I hope you can come back. Um and that's all I want to say right now because we can discuss the films afterward. But I do again want to thank the archive for welcoming here especially to Maya to who from our first conversation um and and May and my partner Deandrea July we have had such a good time putting this together. So I hope you enjoy. Thanks. Welcome back everyone. Should we begin? Let's get let's begin. I can't wait to ask these questions and talk with you all. One more round of applause for these amazing films. Oh gosh, I felt so choked up to see them all. So much of my viewing has been in the library at PAL on a teeny little screen. So um to see them up on the big screen is so wonderful. I wanted to first so here let me first introduce you all or I guess you could also say your own names but to my right Monk Dumis Bara who produced the first film Agita Martinez and then Sylvia Morales whose film we're going to see >> shortly in in 28 minutes uh Crushing Love and then Jeff Feramura who uh I I don't think I said much um that you just watched about Elmer and the gardener Elmer. And it's amazing because I just learned that Elmer's granddaughter is here today and and got to see the film and hear her grandfather's voice. I mean, that that just chokes me up. Um we're also really privileged to have Susie Wong, the actress from Sleepwalker in the midst. So, it's a real Wong family night because we got to watch her father in Wong Singong, her brother Eddie Wong's film. We're so sorry Eddie couldn't be with us tonight. Um, he's having some health issues, so please lift him up. Um, so, but let's get started. Uh, first, if the three of you could just tell us how you got to UCLA, how you first decided to pick up a camera at UCLA. want to use your mic. >> Oh, yes. I said I'll start. Uh I dreamed of going to UCLA. It was the only school I applied to. I didn't know that you were supposed to apply to many schools in case you didn't get accepted. So, when I got was accepted, I was I started crying. And it's just because it's uh in my mind, it was the best place to go to learn how to motion pictures. So, um I had dreamt of going there and so I finally, you know, it was great. It was wonderful when I found out I did go. I mean, I was accepted. Aren't we all happy when we're accepted? >> Made the dream come true. I love that. >> What about the two of you? >> I was a political >> I was a political activist. So I was uh I I viewed going to UCLA as an opportunity to go make trouble. >> Ah good trouble. >> Uh so um at the time that I participated in the creation of ethnic communications, I was out on bail on two grand jury secret indictments facing life in jail. So u I was one of the members of the East LA 13 and I was also one of the members of the Builtmore 6 which was more serious uh that was 20 to life that we were facing and I was on trial for pretty much my entire undergraduate career three years. So, uh, I I didn't think of it the way that perhaps people who applied to film school, you know, were really wanting to get >> in there. And, uh, I didn't really have any intentions of being a filmmaker. >> Okay. >> Uh, not until I went to grad school. And in grad school is when I decided that uh there was an opportunity for me to make a difference uh in terms of uh my social conscious and commitment to political movement >> and that was to devote myself to changing the image of Latinos in Hollywood through film >> uh and by exploring what it is to be human and thereby hopefully humanizing uh and uh being committed to fulfilling my commitment. >> Yeah, my name is Jeff and uh see what made me pick up a camera. I was interested in black and white photography, still photography. And at the time uh I was admitted into the ethno program. Excuse me. I uh was working as a on the the staff of the GEDra newspaper. I don't know how many people >> people know what Gedra is. >> Yeah. Some >> there's some GRAs in the audience, >> but um uh I liked photography. I wasn't really good at it, but I but uh it was something that I I felt I could do and I I could control the entire process from beginning to end since uh the GRA office had a dark room inside of it. So, black and white was my thing at the time and I never thought I would ever get into the UCLA film school. there was kind of this exclusive repository of uh privileged folks who, you know, wouldn't accept people like myself, but I I think it was um I forgot somebody encouraged me to try out somebody at the study center when the program opened up and and all I had as a portfolio were my black and white photographs. And I recently done something for my sister who's in the audience out there for the UCLA educator. And uh I just happened to have this one black and white shot that ended the entire edition uh that particular quarter and uh I think it was the strength of that one photograph that got me into the program. >> Wow. >> Uh somebody recognized it and and um attached me to that photograph. So, I thank my sister who's out there someplace. >> Nice. Nice. >> Giving me that chance. But >> yeah, >> I love the Oh, I'm sorry. Well, I want to just add a little footnote that uh that was the only film I made in film school because I had to come back after dropping out in my senior year thinking that the work that I was doing in the community at the time was more important than going to film school and being one of these privileged kids with a camera. So, I dropped out in my senior year and then I came back to finish once I felt like, okay, I want to be a teacher. I was pulled into uh social service uh through my work with the ABC program out at East LA. >> Say what the ABC program was. >> Asian black choco. >> Yeah. >> They had a little uh um lesson a a curriculum. They developed social studies curricula for uh people like ourselves. Uh and we field tested it in public schools. And one of the lessons was on perspectives. And it every time I see films like these, it it reminds me of that particular lesson because it it started out with a lesson about uh how a son is asking his father on why I think it's why father does the lion die in every story that I read. And the father replies to his son, son, the story will always end the same until the lion learns to write. And I I look at people like uh Bob Nakamura and Betty Chen who were my adviserss during that project one film and they're the people who train a lot of uh the filmmakers attached to visual communications now who uh they're doing that you know they're they're writing that story now. So >> and still doing that. So, >> I love that. Yeah, this is so important because this weekend, some of you may know and some of you may even be here for the uh anniversary of the Asian-American Studies Center at UCLA. So it's really important to to recognize that all of these films and film students were coming to the campus at the same time of the emergence of the CHO Resource Center, all the ethnic studies centers, um the um Afroamerican Center back then, um the American Indian Center, these were all coming on campus and and those centers were very much supporting these students um in their endeavors and really kind of raising hell when when it looked like the filmmakers weren't getting enough support. So, it's a it's a really important fertile time on the campus um and not just in the film school. So, but now we are here 50 something years later. What's it like to look at these stories 50 years later and and and across these films there's so many interesting themes um even though stylistically they're they're quite different. What was it like for you uh for the two of you 50 years later to to watch these projects and and your reflections too, Sylvia, about what it is to look at these works largely made 50ish years ago? >> Well, you know, I what was really nice besides seeing them, I I've never seen any of these films, by the way, uh but I recognize all the names. Betty Chen, I mean, she was the best cook. She was a gourmet cook. Uh uh Bob Namura, you know, and just uh all the names that I, you know, all these people I hadn't seen and haven't seen for a long time. Um but the films themselves, you know, the thing that uh I noticed and I'm sure everybody else did, is the pe prepoundonderance of identity. and wanting to recognize, wanting to be recognized, acknowledged through your family. um something so basic and and they're very they're very emotional because I could feel the the filmmaker the filmmaker's pain actually and um so I I was very happy to get to be exposed to them after all this time and having not seen them at that time and I wondered why didn't I see these films during the time because I know all these folks >> and I guess we didn't always share everything we were doing, >> right? Or some of you were already off working in public affairs television by the time some of the rest of them. Yeah, but 70s I was I think I left on campus. I think I might have left in 72 because I was pissed off. But >> um I came back uh in 78 to do another one uh to do my grad finish my graduate work actually uh but I was very annoyed with a lot of things and the system and I just kind of dropped him. Went and joined a rock and roll band. >> So yeah, that's it. It was called the last woman's rock and roll band and there were like four congeras. Uh I was one of the lead singers and I played the bass on one number because that's what I learned. Uh but you know we did we did community uh music. I mean we we did original music and we'd go to the communities. we go we'd be invited to uh to universities and we'd get paid which was really nice. Uh but we were you know kind of wild and that was a lot of fun and then I came back to making movies. >> So what what do you want me to address? >> What was it like to look at Aita Martinez for example now? Uh, I was I was deeply moved uh remembering her and she's 77 in the movie. I'm 76, >> so I haven't caught up to her yet. Um, and and I was struck by the aesthetic that Esperansa created. It's all her aesthetic. She directed it, she cut it. Um, I I did produce it. was my concept and uh uh I raised the money and did what producers do and uh did the sound work and I cut the audio tape. So her entire narration I did that and then as Bansa cut the movie to it which was really profoundly moving to me that uh she was able to pick the images and create a a tempo and pace and mood that uh carried her life story. And for me it's that movie is joyous right because it it actually presents a living culture that uh had energy and drive and hundreds of years if not thousands of years uh that could represent that land. Um, those of you in the audience who are familiar with Haley Gerima's Ashes and Embers, you might see some real similarities between the grandma in that figure and and a Agida. I I in fact noticed they had the same hat and they they have almost a similar monologue in the film about the earth, you know, producing the food and everything is is healing from the earth. And so it just started to make me really look at how these these um I would call them the the the relationality between between the films was so profound that everyone was really trying to honor as you said that their elders um the earth um ritual all of these things. So, but anyway, I don't want to keep on, but I just thought it was really if go see Garma's Ashes and Embers if you haven't and and then think about how similar the two the two grandma figures are. >> Tonight was the first time I've seen the film on the big screen. >> Wow. >> Since it was shown in its uh original super eight >> Oh my gosh. >> format in Melnut's Hall. But um uh I just wanted to capture Elmer as the person that he was and and to kind of juxtapose, you know, how other people from the outside just kind of wrote him off. And I I feel as though there's some relevance to that film and what's going on on our streets today with people getting you know, hoods thrown over their heads and shoved into cars by mass people and the outrage that I feel when seeing that and and people other people can so easily write these individuals off without really uh feeling um a sense of outrage at what's going on, not just, you know, morally, but legally and everything else. It's just uh insanity kind of what's going on right now. Anyway, the film seeing it tonight, I I felt uh just so close to back to Elmer and uh I miss that guy. Uh, I worked with him the summer before and, uh, some of the background, uh, most of the yard work that you see being done is in Debbie Reynolds house, her backyard. I don't know what happened to that dalmatation once we opened the gate. I don't know if she ever found it again, but uh because we I didn't close a gate behind myself, but and then the the dialogue that was taken verbatim from Elmer's mother, but my mother had to read it and then my sister who's in the audience did the translation over over that. And then uh >> beautiful >> my father read the words of the attorney whose Rolls-Royces and other 15 cars he had in that lot of his. Uh those are words that my father is reading. I I felt so choked up and I I talk about it in the book, you know, I watch Elmer and his life and then I watch Chinatown and I think about the the gardener figure who is so pivotal actually in Chinatown if you go back and but but again he's he's dismissed. He's he's he's almost a joke like it it it centers around him mis you know misspeaking a word. Um, and then you look at that lawn, you look at Evelyn Mo's lawn, you know, that's perfect and enormous and goes for miles and you know that labor made that happen, you know. Um, so it's, so that's something that I've been trying to work on in the book to really think about like the Los Angeles that we see in these films really speaks to that Hollywood that we see, you know, that that is just, you know, about ends up being about Fay Dunaway instead of all the other figures in in the film. So anyway, read the book. Buy the book. >> I really related to the rocks. >> Yeah. Uh because I love rocks and I know my children have made fun of me when I've said, "No, leave my rocks. Don't you dare touch my rocks." So, it was like, "Oh, rocks. Yes, I can relate to that." So, that was wonderful. I just love that. Um I I think we should go out to the audience. We have about like 10 minutes or so to um take a couple questions from the audience if if there's any. Um, and I think we might have a microphone also too. Anyone have a question? Yeah. Thank you. Hi, my name is Christian. I'm an undergraduate in UCLA's ethnic communications program and I just want to give you all your flowers. I've seen these films before and it's big reason why I became a filmmaker. I came to UCLA because of the LA rebelling movement and because I saw those films when I was 13. I saw Killer of Sheep and I studied under Colleen Smith right now. >> Fantastic. >> I just want to say thank you so much. Everything you guys have done has impacted me as a filmmaker and it became the reason that inspired me to pick up a camera because when I watched your films for the first time, I'd seen people who look like me and I'd seen stories that resembled my own. And I just want to say thank you. So I really appreciate your work. Thank you for being here tonight. >> That's great. >> May you make many movies. >> May you make many movies. >> Is there any anyone else? Anyone else have a question comment? Well, go to my theater, please. >> Okay. >> Magro Cinemas in Norwalk. >> Oh, I've been there. >> It's an aplex. It's beautiful. Tell them about it. >> It's one of the few places that you can get subtitles. >> Oh, that's so good. >> You can see you can see bilingual. You can see it bilingual. We have eight screens and we do everything. So, Monday nights we have uh comedies and romantic comedies. Wednesdays we have horror films. Thursday we have classic Hollywood. >> Sunday we have inspirational films. Wednesday night we have a free classic Mexican movie. >> Fabulous. >> Um uh we showed um the Blue Demon and Dracula >> uh with this past Wednesday. And um and we have firstr run Hollywood so you can go see Tron if you want. Nobody else did but you can. >> Oh ouch. >> Any other questions? I'll ask one more if Oh, okay. Wait, can we wait to the microphone? >> It's quite affordable. My theater is very affordable. >> How much? >> Well, the classic movies are five bucks. >> Oh, >> right. A family is seven bucks on Tuesdays and firstr run Hollywood films are 13 >> and you can also have street tacos and burritos and quesadillas and eskit and a michelada or a beer or wine or a cocktail or a margarita to uh enjoy your meal. So there's my commercial. >> Very nice. >> Wow. Yeah, we need you need to program some of these films there. >> I was thinking about it. I was reading here that you >> Yes, we need to I just got my nonprofit uh >> Oh, let's talk. >> Yeah. Yeah. The Magro Cinemas's community nonprofit is just got its letter. It's >> Oh, fantastic. Yes. All right. So, we'll we'll >> Good. >> We'll have a part two, I hope. Um Oh, here's a question. Yes. Oh, can we wait for the microphone? Ah, Miss Wang. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> Um, I just want to say that in many of the movies we see an era that is no longer here. I mean, so many of the the people who were gardeners, my dad, the laundry man, those businesses or professions, if whatever you want to call them, have gone by the wayside in many ways. And so in a way these movies are important to preserve the story of that period of immigration and of labor. And no matter what ethnic origin the story is about, it really honors labor. Uh and I think that there's something very grounding about that even though it's not um romanticized or respected in the greater society. This work was what made us have our lives today. >> That's right. >> So, thank you to the filmmakers and you know and I know that there will be other stories that talk about other traumas and other dramas >> that are current to this time. But, uh it's you're telling the story of your time when you pick up the camera. So good. It's such an important visual archive of our city and and and like as you said that era and and those three center films um also have such uh moving portraits of fathers, you know, that you ha you have either even if in the scripted film of the horse, you have a sense of the boy having to see what kind of labor his father had to have. And then with Elmer and um also with your father um you know sons and the younger generation grappling with what it meant for their fathers to have to endure such racist hostile environments in their in their labor too. I mean that the the masterpiece ultimately becomes killer sheep I think of of that too. But these earlier pieces, I mean, that's what I think is really remarkable is that these earlier shorts are really getting at that same a lot of those same issues. Um, yeah, in such beautiful ways and cross-raially, too. So that's again the the thing that's important to me is is just the chance for a night like this where we where we get to think about our city and and who makes up the city and and how how important it was for each of the communities to to be telling the stories of their elders of their space of their land like Barbara's film. Um and so it's it's it's just so touching to me actually to watch them back toback. So I thank you. Um I think we're about to wrap up, but if there's any final word any of you would like to share and then also final word about this panel and then I'd like to give the micro back to Sylvia to introduce the film that we're about to watch. >> Yeah. Let's just see any other final comments. >> Well, I'm just happy to hear that ethno communications is still happening. There's Yeah, there's a new there's a new be, you know, thanks to Bob Nakamura who in the 90s brought brought the Center for Ethno Communications back to campus. He he was insistent I well, I think he got tired of the film school and wanted to do something a little bit different in Asian-American studies. And that's great. But I will also say that, you know, in my interview with him, he he did kind of regret that it wasn't as multi-racial as the original ethno communications. it became more multithnic, showing many more stories of the vast Asian diasporas and and and vast ethnic groups. So, that's one thing. And I always hope that students of ethnommunications now make sure they understand this history from the 60s because I've had people come up to me at conferences and say, "Oh, I didn't never knew it was multi-racial." So, make sure you share the word about what happened in the 60s, young man. So, uh, I'll take ownership of that, okay? Because I'm the one that rec created the original curriculum >> and organized the sitin in the dean's office until that was approved. And there were four African-Americans, four Native Americans, four Asian-Americans, and four Chicanos, right? And that was the group. And, uh, we strove to keep it that way while we were still there. >> But it came out of a sit in. We we occupied Colin Young's office until he said yes. >> He did. Thank goodness. >> All right. >> That's what organizing will do. I mean, that's great that you, you know, that you were an organizer because most people don't know about things like that >> and if uh you know about organizing, then you can organize something like that. And you did. And that's fantastic. Oh, that's a perfect segue to the the women in your film. >> Um, A Crushing Love is about a middle-aged woman who struggles who is struggling because she's raising her two adopted children. She's not totally happy in her teaching job because she doesn't have enough time to do the thing or the work that she loves to do. And she realizes at some point years I mean it takes a while uh it takes a while for her to realize that she has that she there are women who she admires who are doing what they love to do and they too are mothers and she doesn't understand how do they do it. So they must have a secret and she decides to explore it by making a documentary and it's called a crushing love and that title is taken from um Zoranil Hursten book. I believe the title of it was and God was watching them. >> Yeah. Their eyes were watching God. >> Thank you. And there's a she uses that term in there. She's uh her her main character uh has left her uh community and she's gone off with this wild man and she's wild too and she loves him. She misses her community and she loves this man and she feels like she's experiencing a crushing love. And that's what this woman I I mean I really related to that very strongly because the children, they're loved. She loves the students, you know, she likes the students in the school. She doesn't like the teachers. Um right >> and and she wants to do the work that she wants to do but she can't or is not able to or maybe she doesn't have the vision whatever but uh that's what she's feeling a crushing love by all the things she loves they are crushing her so that's what uh a crushing love is about and I hope you stay to to see it >> all right we're going to get into it right now as soon as we walk off the stage thank you so much love for the panelists