Cities across California are booming with investment and opportunity; these dramatic changes are shifting demographics and displacing historically vibrant communities. CITY RISING is a multi-platform documentary series examining gentrification and its historical roots, economic role, and social consequences. CITY RISING illuminates the journey of California's neighborhoods fighting gentrification and advocating for responsible development.

A strong-willed single mother (Annette Bening) raises her teenage son with the help of two unconventional younger women in this funny, heartwarming look at a makeshift family’s comic adventures in Santa Barbara during the summer of 1979. Nominated for an **Academy Award** for Best Original Screenplay (Mike Mills), and two **Golden Globes** (Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Annette Bening). Nominated for Best...

California -- always a fascinating marriage of opposite extremes -- is at a cross-roads in agriculture. Many Californians are struggling to fend off overdevelopment and the loss of farming lands and traditions while embracing innovative visions of agricultural sustainability. At the same time, California is where fast food was born and a center of the biotechnology industry and large corporate agribusiness. The debates raging in California over issues...

Watershed Revolution is a 30-minute film that profiles community members and organizations working to protect and restore Ventura, California's watershed. It highlights the need for open space and floodplain protection, sustainable agriculture, and community awareness of our most precious resource: water. Contains 4 bonus shorts: Sea to summit (19 min.), Growing the beaches (12 min.), Shifting baselines in the surf (4 min.), Stream team (4 min.).

A stunningly beautiful film narrated by Frances McDormand, Rebels With a Cause spotlights a battle over land that changed the American landscape forever. Beginning in the 1950s, a national movement was born of principles that may seem obvious today. Unconvinced by land developers who promoted residential construction as unmitigated progress, citizens began banding together to preserve open spaces near urban areas for parks and farms — and took the...

Julia Query, activist, comedian, lesbian and stripper at a club called the Lusty Lady, put in long hours on stage and in the peep booth along with fellow exotic dancers Decadence, Lolita, and Octopussy. But when faced with no sick leave, unfair demotions, safely and privacy concerns, and racial discrimination, Query and her co-workers decide to organize and unionize the exotic dancers of the Lusty Lady. WINNER! Audience Award- San Francisco International...

The Delano Manongs tells the story of farm labor organizer Larry Itliong and a group of Filipino farm workers who instigated one of the American farm labor movement’s finest hours – The Delano Grape Strike of 1965 that brought about the creation of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). While the movement is known for Cesar Chavez’s leadership and considered a Chicano movement, Filipinos played a pivotal role. Filipino labor organizer, Larry Itliong,...

In 1994, California voters approved Proposition 187, a ballot initiative denying public education and health care to all undocumented immigrants. Laura Angelica Simon, a Mexican immigrant and fourth grade teacher at Hoover Street Elementary School in Los Angeles was, in her own words, "devastated," and felt motivated to a make film about the impact on her school.

The last stand: ancient redwoods and the botton line unfolds the tragic ramifications of a fifteen-year battle between environmentalists and the timber industry over the fate of ancient coastal redwoods in Northern California.

A beautiful and forlorn tree is stuck in the middle of the Rose Bowl parking lot. Ignored and neglected. Hit by cars, and starved for water and oxygen. Attacked by pathogens and pollutants, and it has no chance to reproduce. Joel Tauber, a young and amorous man, is drawn to the tree. Outraged by the indignities that the tree is forced to endure, he devotes himself to improving the tree's life, watering it with giant water bags, installing tree guards...