Poetry Film
Artist’s Statement
It was only recently that I learned my way around Colorado Boulevard and Eagle Rock Boulevard—the two roads that comprise all that my Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock has to offer. But if you asked four-year-old me how to get to the Fresh & Easy that’s now a Target, I would’ve said, “Oh, it’s across from Nanay Gloria’s!” (Now, though, I know for sure that it isn’t—it’s actually a few blocks down from the neighborhood Filipino restaurant …)
That illustrates how these Filipino businesses have shaped me as a person: I will always orient myself by my community, with people who look like me, or share the same passions for art and activism as I do.
The poem around which this film is crafted came to fruition because the Filipino community here in Eagle Rock is facing erasure due to widespread gentrification. One of the reasons Eagle Rock and all of Northeast L.A. have been greatly affected by this trend is my people have made this community one that is enjoyable to live in. Being pushed out of this neighborhood is to deny our elders the roots they’ve planted here after leaving the Philippines.
To see these businesses close and be replaced by a new, overpriced coffee shop hurts the younger me who was able to find what it meant to be Filipina within these places, and cheats the new generations of Filipino Americans who may never have the opportunity to experience our culture the way that I did.
My hope is that this film inspires bystanders to reflect on these changes and encourages those like me to resist them.
Rebekah Grace de Guzman is a sixteen-year-old Emmy Award-nominated filmmaker. Growing up as a Filipina American in Northeast Los Angeles, Rebekah aspires to use her creativity to drive social change.
In 2023, she was a part of the youth development program Girls’ Voices Now and created a short documentary called The Beauty in Being Different, which explores how the Western beauty standard negatively impacts young women of color. It was nominated at the Children’s & Family Emmy Awards for Outstanding Short Form Live Action Program. Later that year, she directed The Pressure In-Between, a short documentary that chronicles the different pressures teenagers experience.
STALL, her directorial short narrative debut, is about a teenager spiraling within the sanctuary of a high school bathroom stall. Made as part of Made In Her Image’s 2024 Open Lens Film Lab, the film premiered at the Universal Studios Back Lot in collaboration with Janelle Monae’s organization Fem The Future. It has been selected for the Student & Young Artists FEEDBACK Festival and the Youth Diversity Film Festival.
In addition to her work as a filmmaker, Rebekah has interned for The Representation Project and Search to Involve Pilipino Americans and is a co-Editor-in-Chief of her high school’s publication, The Eagle’s Scream.