Citizen Film is the storytelling partner for a broad network of California community-based organizations serving historically under-resourced populations. Since 2002, we have steadily deepened and refined a collaborative approach to documentary practice, connecting local organizations to national amplification partners like PBS. With ten full-time employees and a deep network of community collaborators, we produce multimodal projects that include films, public dialogues, live multimedia performances, place-based installations, and educational activities—all in coalition with arts-based, educational, and civic organizations.
Our work ranges from nationally disseminated PBS documentaries to hyperlocal documentary campaigns. In San Francisco, we collaborate with residents in one of the city’s last remaining majority-Black neighborhoods to create tiled photo walls, documentary murals, and “audio domes” featuring neighborhood dialogue across eight city blocks. In New York, we partnered with refugee service organizations to create a series of Times Square video billboards showcasing the personal objects young refugees value most. Our approach positions communities not as subjects, but as creators of civic art.
Our long-term commitment to California communities informs our national work. Beginning with a PBS documentary launch in 2018, our AMERICAN CREED project has produced an ongoing series of documentary films, as well as short films, photo essays, and audio essays distributed by PBS LearningMedia along with curricular guides. Over many years and several projects, we have partnered with the National Writing Project (NWP), a national educator network with 50+ years of experience supporting student-centered public writing and media initiatives. NWP provides our youth media programs with professional development frameworks, publication pathways, and infrastructure connecting its regional and statewide sites to national audiences.
This proposed project expands that framework within California, bringing under-resourced rural students into dialogue with peers statewide through civic media-making and publication that explores America’s democratic ideals and their relevance to students’ own communities and traditions.