Oakland High Class of 2020 Captured in Documentary ‘Homeroom’

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2021

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Documentary filmmaker Peter Nicks began filming at Oakland High School in fall 2019 to capture its seniors’ final year. He ended up capturing the specifically local experiences of a global turning point. From a student-led campaign to remove police officers from their school that begins months before George Floyd’s murder and resultant protests, to uncertain conversations around a new virus and an eventual Zoom graduation, the documentary “Homeroom” provides insight into the 2020 graduating class, depicting the students of Oakland High as the vanguard of national conversations on inequity and social justice. Nicks, whose previous Oakland-set documentaries depicted a public hospital and the city’s police force, joins us to discuss “Homeroom” and what it means to tell Oakland’s stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:47.0	Welcome to Forum.
0:48.1	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:49.9	As we entered this school year,
0:53.7	we're going to look back today at the year that was for the high school class of 2020.
0:59.0	Filmmaker Peter Nix spent a year documenting the experiences of Oakland High Seniors,
1:03.9	a year that saw incredible turmoil in the district, agitation to toss the police out of schools and the ever-present funding shortfalls. And that was before COVID.
1:08.9	Nix will join us with two of the students from his film.
1:16.8	Then we'll check in with a legendary Berkeley professor who, at 85, decided to try his hand at recording an album.
1:18.6	And let me tell you, it's a bop.
1:41.4	That's next on Forum, after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. From the opening seconds of Peter Nick's new documentary homeroom, there's a strange foreboding. We know something that the Oakland
	...

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