Local film, national TV show make case for conservationBy Howard Lachtman
The Record - July 12, 2003
Two new films, premiering tonight, call local and national attention to Stockton’s Filipino American community and its ongoing efforts to preserve the history of its contributions to San Joaquin County.
“The Game of Solitaire,” premiering at 8 p.m. at the Emerald Restaurant, offers local viewers an engaging short film by Stocktonian Dillon Delvo.
At the same time, on The History Channel (and repeated at 10 a.m. Sunday), preservation efforts by Stockton’s Little Manila Foundation are profiled in a segment of “Save our History: America’s Most Endangered Historic Places.”
Little Manila chair Dawn Mabalon is seen in the show making an articulate and passionate defense of three buildings slated for demolition under a current redevelopment plan. City officials, such as vice mayor Gloria Nomura, argue in favor of the economic advantages of redevelopment.
The Stockton site is one of 11 on the show listed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Local preservationists are delighted their cause will go national on a network with 83 million potential viewers.
“It gives us a national audience who will learn our history here and understand our roots in the area,” Delvo said after screening an advance tape of the show.
In addition, Delvo said, the show will make some locals rethink a history they take for granted, set as it is in the big picture of national preservation efforts.
“When you see this show, you understand it’s much bigger than just Stockton — and not just about Filipino history,” Delvo said. “It’s a part of America’s story.”
The show takes debate over Little Manila preservation to a new level, said Elena Managhas, a supervisor for San Joaquin WorkNet.
“I think this is the first time we have had this kind of discussion in our community,” Managhas said. “We’ve talked about historic places like Weber Point and the Weber house, but this is a live issue because our community still lives here.”
Opponents contend there’s no value in saving “dilapidated buildings,” but the issue as Managhas sees it is “preserving the soul of the place in a meaningful way — combining revitalization with cultural preservation.”
ORGANIZING: In 1948, Claro Candelario, a Filipino-American labor leader in Stockton, urges farm laborers , as part of the Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union, Local No. 7,to strike asparagus growers.
Stockton history lesson
In Delvo’s “The Game of Solitaire,” a young Filipina American college student (Rinabeth Apostol) comes to terms with her painful past by visiting Rudy (Jerry Paular), a Manong (old timer) who emigrated to Stockton in the 1920s.
In a touching story about the generation gap, the girl and the old man find common ground and connection.
Delvo also has a bit of fun with a league of old timers whose members range from an overly emotional dissenter to a woman who insists only a Filipina can get history right.
Delvo shot the film in Stockton as his thesis project in Asian-American Studies at San Francisco State University. Local actors and extras play the roles,
“It’s been Dillon’s dream for many years to put this experience on film — the experience of a younger generation searching for its roots and of an older one trying to pass on its legacy before it’s too late,” Mabalon said. “It’s been a labor of love both for his family history and the history of his community. We think people will learn from it and see themselves and their family members in it, whether they’re Filipino or not.”
Managhas, who appears in the film, described it as “light hearted, but profound in its impact on a new generation.”
She calls the History Channel presentation an honor for Little Manila.
“It takes the National Trust to give perspective to what some say are old, ugly eyesores.”
Will the show win hearts and change minds in Stockton?
The fact that it airs on the History Channel should speak volumes to the community, said Delvo, a Web development analyst for San Joaquin WorkNet and youth minister at St. George’s Church.
“We’re talked about in the same sense as Civil War battlefields and other sites. I don’t know how much more legitimacy you need.”
As to the outreach of his own film, Dillon said that Filipino youth need to be better educated about the pioneering generation.
“Knowing where you come from gives you something to build on, a foundation and a reason to value all the things we take for granted today,” Delvo said.
Owning land, marrying freely, being able to get an education or even walking north of Main Street were not permitted Filipinos of the first generation, he said.
Full circle
The “Game of Solitaire” premieres at a restaurant that housed a Filipino recreation center and movie theater.
“That’s the reason why we chose that building,” Mabalon said. “It was reminiscent of the time that Filipinos watched movies there.”
Mabalon and Delvo said they can relate to the heroine who has to go away to school and come back to Stockton to make sense of her life. They did so themselves.
“That’s the point of the film,” Mabalon said. “We want people to understand that history has an impact on who we are and what we do with our lives.”
The character of Rudy, the solitary, card-playing elder of Delvo’s film, reminds viewers that history is something that can be gone in a blink, Mabalon said.
“Rudy is of the first generation that came to Stockton and really created a community, and he’s the last,” Mabalon said. “It’s so moving because it’s so real.”
Reality, according to the History Channel, puts the Little Manila preservation effort on the map of a growing national movement.
San Joaquin Delta College history teacher Nelson Nagai cited the city’s history of “hit-and-miss redevelopment” and lack of consideration for the historical value of the downtown.
“We pretty much tore down everything that was historically valuable,” Nagai said. “It’s the same problem now with Little Manila. The developers want to come in and build a project, but we don’t know if it will be beneficial or not.”
Making Stockton over without regard to preservation may mean losing connection to the city’s gold rush origins, Filipino pioneers and other aspects of history, Nagai said.
“If you eliminate the (Little Manila) buildings there, the history is gone,” he said. “It’s happening all over the United States. Catering to the developer often doesn’t work out to the best interest of the community.”
The History Channel segment depicts the power of a community to rally to its own defense, to define its own best interests. It will also teach national viewers how Stockton was built with the help and sacrifice of Filipinos, among other groups. In that, it connects directly with the theme of the Delvo film.
“I think it’s wonderful that Stockton’s older caretakers of that history are given due recognition for their contributions to this American story,” Mabalon said.
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PREVIEW
‘SAVE OUR HISTORY:
AMERICA’S MOST ENDANGERED HISTORIC PLACES’
* WHAT: Documentary
* WHERE: History Channel
* WHEN: 8 p.m. today
‘THE GAME OF SOLITAIRE’
* WHAT: Dinner and movie fund-raiser to benefit the Little Manila Foundation
* WHERE: Emerald Restaurant, 315 S. Hunter and Lafayette streets, Stockton
* WHEN: 7 p.m. today
* TICKETS: $20
* Information: (209) 475-0700
From Manila to Little Manila
Drawn to America by the dream of a better life, over 100,000 Filipinos migrated to the United States from the 1920s to the end of World War II. The majority settled in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where the city of Stockton became home to the largest Filipino community outside of the Philippines.
A compact area of the Stockton downtown, known as Little Manila, crackled with the energy of restaurants, shops, labor unions and social organizations that provided a variety of services and supplied a much-needed sense of community to immigrants isolated by the racism and segregation of the day.
As in so many other ethic neighborhoods across the nation, widespread demolition and freeway construction ravaged Little Manila in the 1960s and 1970s. Only three original buildings remain, modest in scale and design, These are now threatened with demolition by an urban renewal strategy that proponents say will provide an economic upgrade for the area.
The redevelopment proposal includes plans to construct a strip mall on the site which would replace the three buildings.
The Little Manila Foundation opposes such plans, claiming the buildings are the last links to local history. The foundation wants to turn the buildings into a museum and cultural center, with new retail development and affordable housing for low-income residents. Such a plan, the foundation says, would honor the contributions of Filipino Americans to the city of Stockton and sustain the current Filipino community that continues to live in the area.
“These buildings are the last symbols of a community that once thrived here, but also continues to live in the area,” said Dawn Mabalon, chair of the Little Manila Foundation. “Our plan will revitalize the area without destroying historical structures or displacing the
current community. We think
cultural preservation can be the agent of revitalization in historic neighborhoods.”
Recognizing the importance of the surviving structures, The National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed Little Manila on its 2003 list as one of America’s most endangered historic sites.
The positions of Little Manila preservationists and urban redevelopment advocates in city government are featured tonight in a segment of “Save Our History: America’s Most Endangered, 2003″ program on The History Channel (8 p.m.) and will be repeated Sunday at 10 a.m).
“Without funding and a strong commitment to preservation on the part of local government,” program host Roger Mudd said, “Filipino Americans will see an important part of their heritage smashed to rubble and hauled off to the landfill.”
