Producer

Mood Tune: The Boss by Diana Ross (YouTube)

While I'm on this hiatus between books -- it's done, just awaiting its turn to be published -- I've been keeping myself busy with a lot of fun projects.

I keep a day job where I get to shape young minds with my progressive agenda (muah hah hah, reds!), I facilitate fiction workshops or do talks or sit on panels when asked, and I judge pageants like I did a few weeks ago. And I write.

But nothing compares, or is as gratifying as the latest project that I've been working on.

I am a documentary producer.

Since this summer I've been researching a group of women -- black, Chicana, lesbian, academics -- who happen to be feminists, and who pushed for the founding of a Women's Resource Center in the East L.A./L.A. area in the early-to-mid 1970s. It's called "A Place of Our Own." It's 22 minutes long.

Tons of work... leafing through old OLD newspapers to find stories and sources, working on Google to see if they're still alive, interviewing people, editing, selecting music, financing, setting historical context, blah blah blah.

Anyway, I got to see a preview of the final cut yesterday and I was SO excited and kinda moved to tears... seeing a finished product come from something that was just an idea I had less than six months ago. It's slick, professional, and a moving and compelling story.

And while it may not make any film festivals or win any awards, I'm excited that the people in SoCali who get to see it when it debuts this week will see how they themselves can make their own history... or should I say HERstory.
fs