Teenagers to Filmmakers: A Decade Later, Sonoma Grads are Back in the Screening Room

What a difference a decade makes.

In 2002, the first year of s film program, Mike Abela was a high school freshman with a dream and a little chutzpah. 

"I was a little steamrolling punk and I wanted to make skateboarding videos," said Abela. But after enrolling in a high school film class, "it turned into a whole new world."

"He came up to me and said 'Mr. Hansen, I want to be a filmmaker, can you help me craft a plan for my life'," recalls Peter Hansen, director of the high school's media arts program. "I mean - the responsibility."

The now 22-year-old Abela, did just that. The young filmmaker, currently in his final semester studying film at San Francisco State, is back in town premiering "En el salón de las promesas," a documentary which takes a critical eye to the state of education in El Salvador, on Saturday morning, co-directed with fellow SVHS grad and current San Francisco State student Andres Rico.

The film took a circuitous route: the team originally planned to film a documentary about El Salvador's former archbishop, Óscar Arnulfo Romero, on the 30-year anniversary of his death. The two schemed and plotted; Rico, 23, who spent his early childhood in El Salvador, made a trip back to gather sources and rustle up funding.

"In the end we just ran out of time and we didn't have any money," said Rico.

Then a twist of fate - in the summer of 2010, a private donor approached Abela and offered to fund the filmmaker's expenses to film a group of Sonoma Valley High School students attending a trip with Seeds of Learning, an organization which helps to build schools in developing nations. Like all things destined, the students happened to be traveling to Utalco, a small town just an hour outside the capital of El Salvador.

"I thought it would be a great opportunity to make a film that showcases that cross cultural connection," says Abela. He approached Rico, a fluent Spanish speaker and multimedia journalist, who has written for the SVHS Dragon's Tale as well as the , to join him.

"It was also my parents home country," said Rico. "I lived there when I was a kid, I felt like I was giving back again."

The students bore witness to a crushing site: before Seeds of Learning stepped in and built a three-room schoolhouse, the 125 Utalco students attended school in ramshackle structure made of mud, plastic and rocks - which threatened to wash away with the slightest of flooding.

Jose Dominguez, an 18-year-old senior who attended the trip, was so inspired by the resiliency of the people he met, he made Seeds of Learning the focus of his senior project this year.

"I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of jealous of them," said Dominguez. "My family here isn’t really that connected - over there they don't have Xbox and PlayStation 3, so when they look for entertainment they only have each-other. If they suffer they all suffer together."

In its final cut, the documentary focuses on the state of education in El Salvador - interviewing students, parents, and government officials to pose the question: "What can be done?"

"A lot of kids in the U.S. don't really appreciate education, kids in El Salvador, they want to go to school and they love to go to school and now they're happy they get to go to a functioning school," said Abela.

"In an age of globalization there are these people creating a sense of global community, and there's a cultural exchange going on that's creating something positive, something more than little kids in a small town wishing they had Nike Air Jordans," said Rico.

Catch "En el salón de las promesas" during the festival's documentary shorts series, Saturday, April 9 at 9:30 a.m. at the New Belgium Lounge at the Community Center, and Sunday, April 10 at 3:15 p.m at Mia's Kitchen at Vintage House. 

Local media-ite Daedalus Howell will show "Fletcher Benton: The Artist's Studio," his documentary surrounding Benton's exhibit at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, on the same program.

Follow along with the film festival through our series.