Fantastic videos about the importance of City College of San Francisco. CCSF is a great place to learn skills such as creative writing, poetry, acting, art, digital design, filmmaking, broadcasting and many more. Based on Tehmina Khan’s poem, The Hearbeat of City College. Directed by Patricia Miller. Acted by Student in Patricia’s acting class. Produced by CCSF’s Cinema Department.
Direct links to videos –
Tehmina Khan’s poem, “Casualties of a War on Creativity,” reflects on the consequences of losing art classes at City College. An ekphrastic poem, it takes inspiration from the No Business as Usual Exhibit of Protest Art at the now closed Fort Mason Campus. The poem draws upon images of corporate greed, which drive the downsizing of urban, working class arts classes. The final stanza specifically names Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, noting that we continue their struggle. Click button to read the poem –
Tehmina Khan, CCSF English Professor, describes the important of City College of San Francisco.
Deborah Shaw’s Description of Drawing, Paulette Goddard, 2020
Pencil drawing of Actress Paulette Goddard in a 1953 American film noir crime film, Vice Squad. The film is also known as The Girl in Room 17. Paulette Goddard starred opposite Edward G. Robinson as escort agency madam, Mona Ross.
See her art, click the button –
Jeff Kaliss’s description of his Poem, Celia, and how it relates to the Diego Rivera Pan American Unity Mural –
Through numerous discussions with Celia Malheiros, the inspiration of my epoymous poem, I became convinced of the progressive and international approach to social and cultural issues Celia shares with me and that we both share with antecedent creative artists such as Diego Rivera and his wife and artistic partner Frida Kahlo. Frida, whose representation in the mural has been called insufficiently prominent, has been a particular model for Celia. Celia’s full expression as both artist and activist led to her ultimately separating from her original musical and marital partner. Respect for the power and wisdom of indigenous culture, much represented in Rivera’s CCSF mural and embodied in Frida’s lifestyle, is also shared by Celia, who has benefitted from voyages of discovery into the northern jungles of her native Brazil.
Read Jeff’s poem, Celia. Click the Click Here button.
The four panels of her picture illustrate different aspects of intersectionality: Organizational (with the Democratic Socialist rose symbol near the center); racial / ethnic; international; and cosmic–showing our earth as part of a vast firmament yet isolated in its ability to sustain life as we know it.