In 2022, hip-hop artist Versoul temporarily stepped away from the microphone and turned on a camera to capture her grandmother’s story while her grandma was around to tell it herself.
Her grandmother Sachiko Higa Rosa Roverso immigrated from Peru to San Francisco in the early 1970s. A single mother of two sons, she lived humbly in her 200-square-foot Mission District apartment until she passed away at 82 years old, not long after Versoul recorded her story. Throughout her life, Grandmother Sachiko felt the impacts of imperialism, war and anti-Japanese racism. The lessons she taught her granddaughter — that treating people well costs nothing and has lasting positive reverberations — became Versoul’s lens as a filmmaker.
When friend and fellow hip-hop artist Dimebag Dizzy informed Versoul about the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Creative Corps Initiative, which funds social justice-related projects, Versoul knew exactly what story to tell. She pitched a documentary about artists whose work and lived experiences reframe a maligned and misunderstood neighborhood, San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, a home base for working class and immigrant families like Versoul’s own. That’s how Versoul became the director of the 30-minute short film This Is My Story: Tenderloin.
“I just want this documentary to inspire others to look at themselves and their communities, and to also treat the Tenderloin with more compassion and respect,” says the filmmaker, whose real name is Christiana Roverso.
