© 2024 KALW 91.7 FM Bay Area
KALW Public Media / 91.7 FM Bay Area
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Crosscurrents

First Friday documentary digs into Oakland's dueling reputations

The question of who should or should not be on any given street in Oakland came to a head recently at the city’s monthly First Friday Art Murmur event. In the past few years, First Friday has grown from a small art walk to a street party that attracts more than 20,000 people.  And increasingly, they’re people who represent very different Oaklands: the one that the New York Times named one of the world’s top five cities to visit, and the one where 30 people have been murdered so far this year.

This past February, those worlds seemed to collide when 18-year-old Kiante Campbell was shot and killed at the event. Suddenly, the contrast between Oakland’s hip identity and its dangerous reputation was thrown into sharp relief. Oakland-based filmmakers N’Jeri Eaton and Mario Furloni are producing a documentary about the event called First Friday. KALW’s Holly Kernan sat down with the filmmakers to discuss the many sides of Oakland that come together at the monthly street festival.

Listen to the full interview above.

For more information about the film, visit the "First Friday" Facebook page.

Tags
Crosscurrents Oakland
Holly Kernan is the architect of the award-winning Public Interest Reporting Project. She is currently news director at KALW 91.7FM in San Francisco. In 2009 she was named Journalist of the Year by the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Kernan teaches journalism at Mills College and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and has taught at Santa Rosa Junior College, Youth Radio and San Francisco State University's Lifelong Learning Institute. She lives in Oakland with her husband, Mike, daughter, Julia, and retired greyhound Benjamin Franklin.