Youth Cinemedia

Youth Cinemedia Shorts focusing on recruiting troubled teens and help inspire them into learning about various media arts. With this in mind I was expecting a bunch of short films featuring plots and actors. Instead the videos were short presentations  focusing  on teens at risk, specifically Hispanic and Native youth and how they deal with the issues of poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, and gang affiliation,along with the consequence of these  injustices in today’s society.

One particular video that stood out to me the most was a former Santa Barbara city councilman Babatunde Folayemi discussing his views on social politics after all his experience. Tying in U.S. citizens and blaming undocumented workers for being detrimental to the economy, to colonists blaming African slaves for the exact same thing. This really stood out to me and I found it to be the best social commentary on the U.S. Some may view his comments as pessimistic, but he ends it on a good note saying things are starting to change right through our youth and today’s generation and finding new ways in reaching out to avoid these social issues. As well as the hypocrisy of criticizing illegal immigrants when they’re the ones indigenous to this continent, the accusations of criticizing latin americans for destroying culture and violating laws and illegally going into America,is actually what our so-called Founding Fathers did to Native Americans. Such disregard of this fact really shows that this is a desperate fight of preaching ethnocentrism.

The film talks a lot with Native American artists including muralists, a hip hop group called ‘Rythmitik’,a Navajo painter, and Pueblo powwow dancers. The film also talked a lot about murals and how they represent the community and the culture within that community. I have no experience in mural painting, but I became eager to work with a group to create a Santa Barbara mural.

The olympic mural in LA which children of different races posing in playful postures has become a representation of LA similar to the statue of liberty in New York.  It seems like the perfect activity for teenagers that would draw them away from gangs and speak publicly about their own identity in Santa Barbara. I enjoyed the Youth Cinemedia I wished I could have been a part of it. At the age of 22 I don’t think I meet their requirements for what they consider so-called youth. I think it offers great opportunities for future generations. I can only imagine what images they will draw.