Intro: In this blog post, OHMA student Brad Bailey reflects on the intersection of film, art, community engagement, and representation. 

Questions of community, artistic spaces, and access should be salient points for any creative person. Cultural organizer Fernanda Espinosa’s recent visit to Columbia made me think about these age-old problems in some very new ways.

Espinosa is originally from Ecuador and now lives in Brooklyn. Among her many achievements, she is a co-founder of Ropajeveros: Immigrant Workers Art Collective and of the People’s Climate Arts organization. Espinosa is a cultural organizer, and her work uses personal oral histories to emphasize community cohesion and wellness, language access, and empowerment.

As an oral historian, Espinosa emphasizes that art can be combined with oral history as a medium for creative expression. In utilizing oral history, art can be a form of activism to create spaces for connection and storytelling when viewed in a public sphere. In her work, she expertly uses archival material and narrator experiences, and repurposes them in order to augment marginalized voices.

Espinosa believes that “the gallery is not a neutral space”. In effect, the actual places we exhibit art exert a profound effect on the work being exhibited in that space. If one finds a way to blend the space and the works displayed in it, you can create an intimacy between the artist and the viewer. I believe this can be applied not just to art, but also to other creative disciplines like filmmaking.

Today, we we watch movies on small screens while sitting at tables, on the subway, or on a plane. However, many years ago ornate “movie palaces” were designed and built for the sole purpose of providing a memorable cinematic experience. Today, those palaces are abandoned or crumbling, yet they hide an amazing history where viewing a film was glamorous and eventful. I’ll never forget the first time I saw “All About Eve” in 2001 at San Francisco’s famed Castro Theater and how the audience roared with delight when the film made a sly reference to the city. If I had seen this at home, it would have changed my perception of the film.

That beautiful theater, built in 1922 and still showing movies today, has graciously opened its arms to thousands of people like myself, to enjoy a movie in a more intimate way.   Although we were all strangers, there was a sense of community. That night that has stayed with me over 17 years later. I realize the reason it was so impactful is because of where I viewed the film.  Espinosa believes that “art is broad” and her work with “space”  and “art” made me realize how I have underestimated the connection between the two in connection to film, the medium in which I work.

This sense of  “community” is something we now have to strive for not just in the narrative of the stories or films we create but also in how we exhibit, distribute and share our work. In Brooklyn, Espinosa and her team gathered neighborhood oral histories and created an installation to post those stories on the fences around the garden. This gave the members of that community a greater voice in telling their stories and improved a sense of community to those who were lucky enough to view it.

Espinosa’s work installing locally made art in reclaimed common spaces and organizing community viewings inspires me as a filmmaker and oral historian to enhance the consumption of film in more meaningful ways. What we need, perhaps, is a return to an older, deeper way of consuming our entertainment. We should put more effort again in where we view art and films.  We pursue efficiency and mass consumption of material instead of absorption and understanding. Our entertainment today is almost “fast food”, in comparison to the movies of yesterday, which were consumed like fine wine.

Brad Bailey is a Master’s candidate in Oral History at Columbia, graduating in 2019. Brad is an avid fan of telling stories, especially those from underexposed communities. At Columbia, is delving even deeper into the methodological and analytical aspects of interviewing, while exploring the nexus of oral histories, film,  journalism.