I spent Saturday attending a workshiop given by the Center for Oral and Public History at California State University at Fullerton. It was titled Protecting and sharing the legacy: Documentary films and photos.

It was two workshops—see COPH Workshop—that complimented each other. In the morning seesion, Sandra Membrila-Robbie showed us her Emmy award-winning documentary film titled Mendez vs. Westminster: For all the children/para todos los ninos. Robbie discussed the details in going from idea to completed work, including tips about making a better documentary. She is a dynamic speaker who exhibits great passion for her subject, and she has a fascinating story to tell about the a period of California school desegregation that happened seven years before Brown vs. Board of Education. She would like to see her documentary shown to fourth graders in California, which is when American history is taught.

In the afternoon, Yolanda Morelos Alvarez gave a presentation and explained the details of putting together a traveling exhibition of historical photographs. Her subject was her exhibit Fire in the Morning, which is a pictorial documentary with typed stories of Mexican Americans in Orange County from 1910 through the late 1940s. She is taping interviews with Mexican Americans who lived in Orange County in that period. She stressed that it is best to do background reading about the history before interviewing, so that you know what kind of questions to ask to trigger memories.

Both talked a little about copyright and getting permissions. Both are running against time because people who were involved in the incidents or period of time that they cover are quite old. Alvarez mentioned that when the old Mexican neighborhoods are torn down, whole bits of history disappear, as the people are gone and hard to trace and their photographic collections may be scattered or lost.

Contacts:
The Orange County Metro did an article about Robbie: OC Metro’s hot 25. Robbie is starting work on a sequel that gives some of the harder facts that cannot be put before fourth grade children. Sandra Robbie wrote an article for LatinoLA, which gives a synopsis of the documentary. She can be reached at srobbie@koce.org.