Rooted Resurgence is Coming to a Hood Near You
By Mindy Spatt with Helen Vozenilek
The SF Urban Film Fest introduces itself as an “intergenerational, multi-racial, cross-disciplinary team of urban planners, filmmakers, housing activists, academics, and civic innovators leveraging the power of storytelling to create just and equitable cities.”
That may sound lofty, but it is exactly what Fay Darmawi and her team have achieved, as was apparent at festivities marking the opening night of the Festival. Urban planners, housing advocates, transit geeks, students, past attendees and filmmakers filled the Oasis, a drag bar with deep roots in the city, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the SFUFF. A huge spread of Middle Eastern cuisine from the Oasis Grill kept about one hundred celebrants well fed while spirited bartenders provided lubricants.
Key festival leaders were introduced to the crowd and filmmaker Vincent Woo, whose film Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride was screened later in the evening remarked on just how much the SFUFF itself, rooted in the heady combination of urban planning and local activism, mirrors the ways San Francisco and the Bay Area are resurging. Woo told me he was delighted to be included in this year’s festival since his film highlights the role of public transit in resurgence and renewal. My blogging partner Helen Vozenilek noted that “Woo’s commentary about public transit is the opposite of tunnel vision. He sees BART, MUNI and other transit agencies as essential elements of a prosperous city. And necessary components of a resurgent Bay Area.“
There was a rustle of anticipation when San Francisco City Attorney David Chui arrived with a large envelope in hand, a City Resolution commending Darmawi and the Festival. At the end of his laudatory remarks Chui joked “Fay for Mayor,” which generated a great deal of enthusiasm. No joke, Fay measures up quite well against the current field. And she’s a planner. Why aren’t there more of them in public office? Although I’ve attended and volunteered at the Festival in the past, this event really opened my eyes to the depth and breadth of the work done by urban planners, many of whom seem to have a clearer vision for the city than most of our politicians do.
For this year’s festival, the core team wanted an anti-doom loop theme, but only with content that didn’t contribute to that narrative by treating renewal as new. “[M]any communities in San Francisco have been working on resurgence for many generations but have not had the limelight,” Fay told me. For example, “Chinatown and the queer/LGBTQ community have been fighting to keep spaces and networks going in face of discrimination and displacement for so long. We wanted to bring attention back to these communities to balance the media’s attention on the financial district and Union Square.”
Fay kicked off the festivities with a strut down the famed Oasis Catwalk. After the raucous applause that ensued she introduced the team that shaped and planned the Festival. Ronald Sundstrom, the festival’s Humanities Advisor and Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco, claimed to be out of his element, prefacing his remarks by warning that he was “not cool enough to be here.” He said that rather than a doom loop, he sees a bloom loop. That may be because he’s involved in training a new generation of urban planners. The multigenerational crowd at the Oasis included students from urban affairs programs at USF, some of whom were also volunteering to help staff the event.
Festival curator Robin Abad Ocubillo also sees great promise, especially in the resurgent gay community that will be highlighted in a program he produced for the closing night. Robin also spoke about the multiple outlets and opportunities he’s found in San Francisco as a queer Filipino, artist and “nerdy” urban planner.
Attendee Greg Jowdy echoed that sentiment, saying “San Francisco…welcomed me and allowed me to be what I wanted. There is a transience here because of economics,” Jowdy said. “Many come here without roots and seek to establish them. This calls us to be constantly reborn and resurgent.”
Jowdy was chatting with Sasha Hauswald, Chief Housing Policy Officer for the City of Oakland and a producer whose film “Home is A Hotel” will screen at the festival. The film looks at the struggles of people seeking housing in Single Room Occupancy hotels. Sasha comes to the subject with a personal connection; her grandmother and great-grandmother both lived in SROs San Francisco in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. Her family history, rooted in the city she lives in, was her inspiration for the film project.
Susie Smith, curator of the festival program Creating a Future for Home and Associate Editor on the film, said “Housing is a constant refrain in SFUFF. “We all talk a lot about what doesn’t work but there are things that work,” she commented, “like rent control.” I’m an artist and “without rent control I couldn’t live here and be a filmmaker.”
The Festival’s relevance to both activism and art were referenced by others on the team. Abigail Panares, a filmmaker and producer,told the crowd that she was drawn to join the festival in 2023 as the festival production manager because it’s a “beautiful intersection of art and storytelling and community and being of service to something larger than myself.” Festival curator and producer Kristal Celik brought her own involvement back to the broader theme saying “The SFUFF helped me understand what an organization looks like that leads with relationships. It helped me create a sense of rootedness.”
During her opening remarks Fay announced that the festival would be pausing to lean into a gap next year “to allow us to reflect on our impact and dream on our future potential. The pause is the potential,” she said. “The gap is the possibility.” She connected the story of how during the curation of Chinatown Rebels festival program, they turned a set-back and gap of knowledge into an opportunity for further exploration. In co-curating the event with Hoi Leung of Chinese Culture Center, they thought they had put together a perfect program until they received a scathing email from a community member who called them out on using the wrong film poster for Choy’s “DuPont Guy” film — it was a poster of the DuPont Guy Collective, not the film. The gap of history was the potential to learn a hidden fact — the Collective had won a civil rights case against CBS in the early 1970s for perpetuating Asian stereotypes in programming and the US Department of Justice awarded the Collective a 15 minute weekly DuPont Guy radio show for a year. Fay concluded that in this gap is a possibility of resurrecting that radio show — maybe as a DuPont Guy podcast. And thus, the potential and possibility are also in the network of innovative artists, activists, planners and thinkers she’s built over the past ten years. It is a network that includes not just San Francisco but the entire Bay Area, connected by BART, as Woo’s film shows, and connected by the shared vision and aesthetic the festival is known for.
Helen and I talked with many of the folks at the event, and almost every one of them said they were there because they “knew Fay, worked with Fay or Fay said I should meet some people here.” Keta Price had come over from Oakland with a colleague “because Fay emailed me.” An urban planner, actress and entrepreneur, Price’s firm, Hood Planning focuses on transportation and environmental planning. “I got into it because there were a lot of transportation and housing barriers in East Oakland,” she said. “We focus on working hand in hand with frontline communities to reimagine their built environment. Coming to a hood near you!” she quipped. This network, the people Helen says are “walking the walk” will surely continue to drive possibility and positive change.
This event took place on April 15, 2024 at Oasis in San Francisco, and was co-presented by Oasis. For more information about SF Urban Film Fest, visit their website.
