DEEP CUTS
Filmmaker Yoel Iskindir is focusing his lens on the effects income inequality and segregation has on creativity and success.
Photography by Bréana Parks
I want you to imagine what you were doing back in mid 2020. It’s hard to forget: The days we were all stuck inside our homes binging movies, panic buying everything on sight, researching the virus, and finding new hobbies like Garageband or roller skating. But while many saw their worlds shrink during that time, others experienced radical expansion: They took to the streets or to their keyboards, searching for ways to create reform in a country at a moment where the veil was slowly beginning to lift. Yoel Iskindir was one of those people. And for him, taking a deeper look at the unassuming city he had long called home sparked his own personal revolution.
After living in New York, Iskindir came home to Marin to ride out the pandemic. His hometown, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, is known for being one of the safest and wealthiest areas in the Bay, and also one of the whitest—a fact that was no new news to Iskindir. He grew up in Marin, often floating between two worlds: waking up before the sun to drive from his lower income neighborhoods in the Bay Area to Marin County, where most of his peers were white and lived in posh homes. From a young age, this double consciousness created a fire in Iskindir to create change through filmmaking, and represent the untold stories he and others had lived through, but not yet seen on screens.
In October 2020, Iskindir created a series of short, social-media-friendly videos under the hashtag #EraofMarinCity. The videos feature Iskindir talking directly to the camera—dropping statistics and uncovering the history of segregation and systematic racism in Marin County. In 2019, a state review found that the city’s two elementary schools offered drastically inequitable opportunities to students. At Bayside MLK —where the majority of the students are Black and Latino—students have suffered under years of rapid staff turnover, inadequate class offerings, excessive discipline and substandard academic performance. As a result, the district was issued California’s first desegregation order in 50 years, a court order requiring them to end the unequal treatment of students who attend Bayside MLK. Iskindir brought this story to a wider audience, and spotlighted the fact that in the midst of the civil unrest and calls to decrease police funding, the city actually cut money earmarked for social services and bumped up funding for the sheriff’s department. Iskindir’s videos expose the city’s policies and practices that would have otherwise been overlooked. With his #EraofMArinCity videos, Iskindir hopes to promote change and reform within his hometown.
As an educator and artist myself, it was enlightening to sit down with Yoel Iskindir and talk about his vision for #EraofMarinCity, as well as his work with youth. Below is an edited version of our conversation.
Photography by Bréana Parks
Breana: What was it like growing up in Marin?
Yoel: When I was a kid, even as a six year old, I was aware of the weird fact that we were waking up at 5:30 in the morning to drive over a few counties to go to school.
Breana: Did you feel like you were living a double life?
Yoel: Yeah, because I was surrounded by rich white people. Even though there's a mansion down the street, my sister and I shared a room in a small, affordable apartment. It kind of becomes a double life, like when I meet people in college, and I mention I grew up and went to school in Marin. They’ll be like, ‘Oh, you grew up, like, hella privileged, and rich’ or whatever.
Breana: They make automatic assumptions.
Yoel: I'm just like, you're the problem. I never wished I was rich and white. I never wished I was rich and Black, per se. But once you hear people assume that you have this privileged life, I feel like that's even worse. People not knowing what you had to go through. You wouldn't make that assumption for someone who lives in Oakland or Richmond. But people just think if you live in Marin, you are this super privileged person. Don't get me wrong, I did have some privileges, like I never had to worry for my physical safety. I can't say the same thing would be true if I lived in Oakland or SF. But yeah, it did kind of feel like a double life.
Breana: You were Hannah Montana.
Yoel: Straight up. *sings Hannah Montana*
Photography by Bréana Parks
Breana: I think sometimes people's perceptions about Marin as being exclusive comes from the fact that it seems so detached from the rest of the Bay, while everything else seems very connected.
Yoel: And there's literal segregation intentions for that. Like when they were constructing the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system—there’s clear documentation of that history, of Marin people going out of their way to not allow BART out this way. Because what do you associate BART with? Opportunities for poor people, like Black people and brown people. Not public transit. And they associated it with a way for people in the East Bay to make their way up, and to get out. It provides opportunities to create affordable housing. I’m pretty sure in the entire county there's only one or two affordable housing places, and they're in Marin City, which is like a historically Black city. Have you heard of Marin City? It kind of stands out because it's a very clearly Black and not rich part of Marin. And of course politically, it gets the short end of the stick. It gets pushed down every step of the way. Even George Lucas— our golden child, he's like the most famous rich person from Marin—went out of his way to try to create affordable housing and the county said, nope.
Breana: Was there a moment or an incident where it made you aware of the injustices and inequalities here?
Yoel: On top of the immeasurable ways my family and I were treated differently in all facets of life, learning about the institutional ways that determine different people's circumstances really upsets me. The fact that even though we're a small county with a small population, we have something like 18 school districts, which, when you do the math, is one school district serving a couple thousand people. Instead of, say, San Francisco, for example, which has one single school district. And you kind of realize that perhaps this is an opportunity for the bigwigs to siphon money unequally.
In Marin City for example, they created a charter school. They've created two schools as a way to funnel money into the white community and out of the preexisting Black school. And you think about the schools in Marin, which might be literally a couple miles away from each other, have people controlling how much funding they get and completely dictate their entire future.
Breana: So in October 2020, you released a #EraofMarinCity. Explain the meaning behind the hashtag.
Yoel: The phrase “Era of Marin City” is a call to action to create, literally, an era for Marin City. Initiating a great awakening for why Marin City is the way it is. The city has always been looked at like the black sheep of Marin County. And people have accepted and allowed it to not flourish as much as other communities in Marin. So not only do I want us to bring attention to that through a hashtag, but to also really imagine what the future of it can look like. Starting today.
Breana: What changes if any have been made since your video was released?
Yoel: A lot of people have shared it—people of all walks of life. There have been a lot of talks about the school system in Marin City specifically. The desegregation order has been focused on even more. Because it's been an ongoing thing for about a year or so even before I made the video. And I think a lot of public pressure has really sped up the process.
I was told the video was a big factor in that. That's definitely rewarding to hear. That you try to put these bitches on blast—can I say that? —and people actually are like, Oh, fuck, I'm gonna share this hashtag and call it out. And then it kind of actually helps. And there's a lot of people in the Marin City and Sausalito communities, who for years, have been putting pressure on desegregation. And I feel like with everything that happened in 2020, aka, non-Black people suddenly realizing racism is still a thing, it was really a period to really focus on that kind of stuff.
Photography by Bréana Parks
Breana: What are the biggest barriers that you faced in your growing creative career?
Yoel: I mean, just being lower income and the mentality that comes with that. See, that's one of the biggest things that separate people. Sure, there are countless people who want to be filmmakers—but do they have the means to do it? The only people who had some gear in front of them were people who had families or households that could afford that shit. They think, Oh, I can see myself doing this. But if you never had that in front of you, then when could you ever have that experience? What does that mean? How does that play out?
That’s why almost everybody who's in the film industry is white, or comes from a wealthy family or something along the lines of that. Even if you’re thinking to yourself like, ‘Oh, that's not true,’ because of award shows, and Black Panther and this and that, okay. But just because you've seen more Black people on screen in the past couple of years, it doesn't change the epidemic of income inequality and how that creates a barrier of entry for a lot of people. Even to this day, I'm a grown ass man, and yet, it's not like I can afford every creative or professional impulse. Just because I'm an adult with a degree, doesn't suddenly mean that I have disposable income. It's not like income inequality suddenly dissipates. Just because a corner of Hollywood fetishizes Black people that doesn’t change how toxic the industry is for minorities and women. It doesn't mean my family suddenly doesn't have bills to pay. So, I just really want people to think about that: what kind of people are in this film festival, or shooting these projects? They think they're there because they have the drive, they have the enthusiasm. I’m like, no, they're there because they had the resources to do that. Of the people who are not, it has nothing to do with their intention, their drive, their motivation. It has to do with the fact that they can't move mountains to follow their dreams.
Breana: You now head up the film program at Saint Domenico School in Marin—a nearly 200 year old independent boarding school in Marin. How has that experience expanded your perspective?
Yoel: It's kind of trippy right now that I'm a film and photography teacher. My entire life I've had that mentality of desperation. Like you can't have nice things. And now suddenly, I'm the head honcho at my school when it comes to the film and photography program—I teach with this entire room of very expensive equipment. And it's really a mindfuck for me, now that I'm employed here and this is my classroom. This is a new mental shift for me. If I want to sharpen my skills, I can literally grab this expensive lens right here. I'm not used to that. And whereas if you asked me a year ago, it was a matter of what I have in front of me. I had my camera and my one lens. That's it. But now we have a camera and a bouncer and a C stand, lens filter … It's really trippy for me!
Breana: Does it make you feel like you have imposter syndrome in that space?
Yoel: Fuck yeah! Maybe not even imposter syndrome, but just a lot of mental rewiring that some people really don't have to think about. My entire life, when people say, like, oh, why don't you do this? Or how come you haven't done this?
In the back of my mind, I'm pissed because their failure to understand how a lack of access to expensive programs or formal education results in their judgement of character? We're not up here. For so long, I've been avoiding these things in my free time because I didn't want to tempt myself. Or feel ashamed. I was closed-mindset.
I haven't produced a short film since college. And that is because since college, it’s been hard to find access while making ends meet. To be a filmmaker, you have to have money or you have to ask people for support. And that's a whole other thing.
Photography by Bréana Parks
Breana: But then you gotta take the ego out of it like, if people actually want to help, they will help. Maybe it's just that I was an immigrant child on a low income. And it's just like, you don't want to ask people for help, because you want to do it yourself.
Yoel: For sure. I think people who don't know what it's like can't relate to these concepts. And once you recognize that these are barriers some artistsare going through, it really informs you. Why certain people aren't producing films, certain people aren’t pursuing coding, or photography, or ballet or travel. People credit vacationers as adventurous, but they fail to credit working class families.
So what are we going to do? Not just say, ‘here's $5,000 to make one short film.’ That's great. But that's like putting a bandaid on it. hat are we going to do in general to narrow the achievement gap, so that anyone who wants to pursue anything has the chance?
Breana: And speaking of making shit, you are working on a film about this topic right now.
Yoel: Yeah, I'm working on a short film called Twice as Fast. It focuses on a kid who exists in both worlds as a low income Black person being raised by a working class mother. But he's also at a posh private school. And the film explores the idea of how Black people have to work twice as hard to get half as much. And of course ideas of alternative masculinity, especially in boyhood and with teenagers. And perhaps most importantly, it explores things that aren't often talked about, such as themes of generational wealth and the achievement gap. And it aims to answer the question, How can the world be a different place without the gap?
Photography by Bréana Parks
I'm hoping, after this film, to continue to explore these ideas, not just on the screen, but in real life. I want to create a grant program aimed to specifically combat the achievement gap—a fund that we as a community add to, then select students. A grant not to pay for a student's tuition, but instead to give them the resources or the tools that they need to pursue the thing that they wanted to pursue, like, for me, it was filmmaking growing up. I didn't have a camera. We take things for granted, like a laptop. The things that rich kids are able to just toss around. Imagine what having a laptop would be for the low income student if he wants to be a music producer, or a coder. The grant is going to be controlled and operated by people like me who are young, who know what it's like to have been an underrepresented, low-income, high school student, only a handful of years ago. And how many grants or scholarships can you think of that are operated or nonprofits in general that are operated by 20-something-year-old Black men? I think people already know there is inequality. But I want them to more intimately know how that affects people. And how the life circumstances of people can be completely dictated by the conditions they grew up in, as opposed to their will, their motivation, or interest. I also want people to ask questions, like ‘what can I do to help?’
Breana: Speaking of help, can you let us know at least one organization you'd like us to support?
Yoel: This response is very separate from the rest of our conversation. And a lot more serious and grim note, there is a devastating genocide happening to my people in Ethiopia. And I would love it if more people would talk about that.