A few years ago, filmmaker Danielle Thompson and her family were evicted from their home in Oakland and moved to Pittsburg, a city 40 miles away. Using that experience as fuel, Danielle produced her first documentary film, Displaced.
Danielle spends countless hours commuting each week because she’s working toward a communications degree at Hayward’s Cal State East Bay while holding down a job in Oakland.
She’s an instructor at Youth Beat, a nonprofit that shows young people the ropes in the world of media making. Danielle first connected with the program as a teenager, and now she’s working to give back to the organization that introduced her to filmmaking.
Inside the studios at Youth Beat’s headquarters, Danielle and I discussed her film, gentrification in Oakland and how she hopes her career will one day bring in enough financial resources to allow her to move back to her hometown.
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