The Autumn Lights Documentary
By the Light of the Gardens
Through the annual Autumn Lights Festival fundraiser we enter the urban oasis that is the Gardens at Lake Merritt in Oakland, California. Established by gardening clubs more than 75 years ago, the Gardens at Lake Merritt nearly died when the city had to cut parks maintenance staff from 33 to 6 people in 2010.
Home to the nations first wildlife preserve, Oakland has always tried to be environmentally responsible despite decades of economic challenges (white flight, state & federal economic divestment in Black communities, the housing collapse of 2008, and more).
This documentary introduces Tora Rocha, a Portuguese-American who became Oakland’s Master Gardener. She stepped in to organize folks to save the gardens with the first Light Festival in 2011. Now in retirement, she continues to dedicate her life to sustainable gardening and preserving free access to green spaces. Following Tora we meet other characters along the way. Gardeners, Artists, Volunteers.
Through these characters audiences learn about garden clubs, regenerative gardening, and the teaching organization Tora runs year round – The Pollinator Posse – which works to protect pollinating insects and birds. Turns out that many of the herbicides gardeners (unknowingly) use aren’t so great for bees and butterflies.
The film culminates in the successful closing of the Autumn Lights fundraiser – bringing new allies, funding, and preserving the gardens as an incubator for sustainable gardening practices that will help to end the climate crisis.
A special thank you to the Friends of the Gardens at Lake Merritt and Tora Rocha, without whom this project would not be happening.
Production Team
Many talented filmmakers are contributing to this project. Scroll down to read bios for some of the key staff and click on each name to learn more about each person.
CB Smith-Dahl is a Black/multiracial Director and Camerawoman based in Oakland, California. She’s the Co-Founder/Director of Together Pictures which specialize in creating projects for diverse audiences with diverse crews.
She’s directed hundreds of fiction and non-fiction social media videos for clients throughout California like this tutorial series, online ads like these and these, and this dramatic film. She creates high quality content and makes the collaborative process fun for clients and crew.
As a Director of Photography, she’s also lensed numerous features and shorts including Clarissa’s Battle, directed by Tamara Perkins which is currently playing in film festivals like this one, this sponsored content for Google Class of 2020, “All Girls Matter”, directed by Gloria Moran, which was broadcast nationally on PBS, and Teacher Like Me by Dawn Valadez. She’s known for her verité work and for making folks feel comfortable with the camera. She also creates months long time-lapse projects.
She’s worked every motion picture production job imaginable – in Atlanta and Los Angeles – before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Fluent in Spanish and Teenager, she has lived on 3 continents and traveled in 5. She has a BA from HBCU Spelman College and also an MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
She’s a member of the Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Women of Cinematic Arts, and the Collective of Documentary Women Cinematographers. She’s mentored hundreds of diverse young people while teaching them filmmaking skills.
Anjanette Levert is a journalist and an award-winning filmmaker dedicated to creating, and supporting the creation, of diverse images showing the humanity of peoples of color in media.
Originally from Atlanta, GA, she studied journalism in the suburbs of The Windy City in Evanston, IL at NorthwesternUniversity’s Medill School of Journalism. She later studied documentary filmmaking in Harlem’s City College of New York where she earned a Masters in Fine Art.
In her senior year at Northwestern she took a graduate level Social Anthropology class and was introduced to ethnographic films. Intrigued by what she saw, and a little research, she discovered documentary film making. She had found her calling, documentary filmmaking the perfect way to combine her love of photography (she had been taking pictures since she was 12) and journalism. But it would be almost 10 years before she made her first film.
Not knowing how to get started as a documentarist, she spent the first couple of years of her career as a print journalist. Writing for such newspapers as: The Jacksonville Times-Union, Atlanta Daily World, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Between Chicago and her return to Atlanta, she spend a hot and sweaty year in the Dominican Republic working as a reporter, and later Managing Editor, for the Santo Domingo News, an English-language newspaper.
Once back in Atlanta, a high school friend introduced her to video production where she worked as a production assistant during Atlanta’s Black music boom. The combination of video production and journalism enabled Ms. Levert to join CNN. There she had the opportunity to work for all its news networks: Headline News, CNN, CNN International, CNNEspañol and the defunct CNNFinancial News. There she assisted in news coverage for over a decade of notable events. Ones that were most memorable for her are: The OJ Simpson Trial, The New Millennium, 9/11, Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes’ Death from TLC, CNN’s 25th Anniversary, Hugo Chavez’ Coup, The U.S. Military’s Shock and Awe Campaign-Baghdad. She has also worked for Turner Private Networks, Cartoon Network Latin America, The Gospel Network, ESPN, BET News, ABC and CBS.
As a filmmaker, Ms. Levert made her first short film in 2000, “Shake It Up, Shake It Down” about Atlanta’s Black College Spring Break, also known as Freaknik. Her film focused on the perspectives of the students and alumni of the AtlantaUniversityCenter where the event originated in 1982. The film showed a divergent view of what was seen in both the local and national news media. It screened at festivals throughout the Southeast.
Her second short film, “The Wedding Proposal” is a personal journey film that explored Ms. Levert’s marriage options as a professional African-American woman and those like her. The film has screened at over 30 film festivals including, the Pan African Film Festival, Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival (twice, included a Best of Festival screening) and Hot Springs Film Festival. It aired numerous times on the BET Jazz Network as part of a short documentary program called “Black Voices.” It is distributed to the educational market by Filmakers Library.
Ms. Levert is currently developing other media projects, as well as, “The Marriage Game” the feature-length version of “The Wedding Proposal” and “Swim Freaks” a narrative film about a suburban teenage girl becoming a lifeguard and the summer that ensues after she’s assigned to the ghetto pool.
Ms. Levert is also the co-founder of Cinema Sisters, an empowerment group for women of color documentary filmmakers in New York City. She also organizes a Just Write Now series, where people meet and write in the company of other writers. She is a contributor and editor for BlackandBrown News.com. She is a member of the Black Documentary Collective and the Harlem Arts Alliance Screenwriters Workshop.
Over 20 camera people have donated video, stills, time-lapse and drone footage to this project. The lead Cinematographer is Roy Wanguhu.
Roy Wanguhu is a visual storyteller who uses the camera as his voice. What’s important to know about his work is that the focus isn’t to simply wow you with magnificent cinematography, it is to surrender his skills and expertise to a bespoke experience that reveals the voice of the brand, inviting audiences to lean in and immerse themselves, if only for a moment.
With a penchant for both the creative and the technical, Roy approaches each project with a unique style to achieve desired results. He aspires to bring the vision of clients to life and produce masterpieces.
He’s able to do this using cutting edge technology and equipment. He scours the world to accumulate a wide selection of tools of the trade. One of his super powers is in selecting the perfect camera and lenses for each task. This has been a major component that has fueled his success as Director of Photography.
For nearly two decades he’s been honing my craft while traveling the world with companies large and small. Whether representing Fortune 100 companies like Google and Nike, working with creative agencies or guiding Solopreneurs that are just starting out, his clients say that the quality of his work consistently shines through.
The success his companies have earned is due in large part to the ability to create an ideal mood by harnessing the perfect light that conveys each story with meticulous attention to detail. This has led to Roy being consistently recognized for a level of excellence which has become his hallmark.
HIs goal is that each audience experiences cinematography that inspires, delights and leaves them wanting more. In fact, the greatest compliment and honor for him is becoming a trusted, frequent collaborator with clients. If you would like to work with an enthusiastic, flexible professional with a keen creative expression that will elevate your brand and exceed your expectations, Roy’s the one to call.