In ‘Homeroom,’ an unprecedented school year caught on film
Oakland filmmaker Peter Nicks had already made two well-regarded documentaries capturing the flawed institutions of his city and their role in shaping local lives: 2012’s “The Waiting Room,” about a public hospital, and 2017’s “The Force,” about the Oakland Police Department during a wave of shootings and protests.
To complete his Oakland trilogy, Nicks turned to Oakland High, a public school with a diverse student body of mostly Asian American, Black and Latino children. Nicks’ interest wasn’t just in rounding out his city-surveying series. It
was personal. His teenage daughter, Karina, had been going through a difficult time. In making a movie about the hardships of growing up as a teenager of color in Oakland, he was, in a way, making a movie about her.
“A lot of films have explored the innercity high school experience. I was more interested in something akin to ‘The Breakfast Club’ but for kids of color,” Nicks said in an interview. “A lot of that was driven not just to complete the trilogy, but we had really been struggling with our daughter and we’re a family with resources. Navigating the mental health system was very difficult, and I started thinking: What’s it like for families without resources?”
Just as Nicks was beginning filming in
September 2019, Karina died suddenly at the age of 16. He decided to keep going with the film, even though that meant immersing himself in the lives of kids a lot like his daughter. The movie, “Homeroom,” is dedicated to her.
“It was hard. The essence of it is holding your grief and holding the beauty that these kids represented and why we were there and what we were trying to capture. Having those two things coexist simultaneously was just something I had to get used to,” says Nicks. “The one thing I do carry and hold very dearly is that this is a film that honors her spirit. She was really like these kids in the film. In whatever way she’s doing it, she’s been pushing us along because it’s a miracle the film ever got finished.”