Better Angels Lavine Fellowship | St. Louis International Film Festival
Urban Planning • Social Welfare • Geography • Public Policy • Human Rights • Law • Mental Health • Behavioral Health • Social Justice • Environmental Justice
Date of Completion: 2024 | Run Time: 75 minutes | Language: English with Spanish subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Mimi Chakarova | Producers: Aisha Knowles, Wellington Jackson & Lydia Chávez | Composer: Gavin Templeton | Illustrator: Lola Noguer
THE APOLOGY, a feature-length documentary by Mimi Chakarova, investigates an incident in the 1960s in which Alameda County and the City of Hayward dismantled the entire community of Russell City, pushing 1,400 residents out of their homes and off their land – all to claim the 200 acres for an industrial park. Most of the residents ended up in Russell City in the first place because Black and Latino families could not purchase homes or land elsewhere. For them, the unincorporated area, located south of Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco, was a beloved village – with 13 businesses, seven churches and 205 families. All of this was lost in 1963. Sixty years later, THE APOLOGY features the stories of more than twenty Russell City residents and their descendants. Using archival footage, animated photos and illustrations, the film explores the historical significance of an apology. What does it mean to make amends for a past that is very much present in the memories of the former residents?
Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival
"The apology is the first of its kind in Alameda County’s 170-year history, and describes the County’s culpability in the community’s seizure and destruction as an example of “historic institutional racism and structural barriers that remain in our society and institutions.” The documentary figures centrally in the text of the apology, which identifies it as the culmination of an effort by past Russell City residents and their descendants to share the history of a close-knit, diverse, working class community whose existence and destruction has been “ignored and eventually erased” to make way for industry."