One hundred and fifty years of San Mateo County history is just months away from being depicted in an hour-long documentary. It's up to Jon Rubin, National Image Works, and KM2 CEO and President Kevin Mullin to cut down more than 100 interviews to tell the 60-minute story. The documentary is part of the county's sesquicentennial celebration. The San Mateo County Historical Association will keep all the extra footage and final cut of the movie. With a looming December premiere date, Rubin and Mullin are busy collecting interviews and editing film. They intend to tell the story of the Ohlone tribe through the high-tech suburban county the area is now. We want to show how it all developed and the lessons which were learned. The things which lead to good things and the bad things,? said Rubin .
The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors agreed to give the project $75,000 in January as long as the San Mateo County Historical Association ponies up the difference. The cost of completing a 30- to 60-minute video is between $100,000 and $200,000. Since raising the matching funds, Rubin and Mullin embarked on a history lesson of the county with help from Mitch Postel, director of the county's historical association. The pair interviewed a wide variety of people from community leaders to a man who stayed in an internment camp, people whose ancestors were bootleggers to plumbers who helped build the airport. If you bring curiosity to the table, everyone is interesting if you let [them] tell their story.? Rubin said. Everyone has a story and it's the most important story in the world.?
On Wednesday, Lennie Roberts, legislative advocate for the Committee for Green Foothills, shed a little light on the environmental history of the area for the documentary. I've actually been doing a lot of writing about my own family's life story. They came to the East Bay around the 1860s around the same time the county was starting. So I feel a direct connection with what it must've been like at that time,? she said. Not every interview will make it into the final cut of the movie. Every interview, however, was a valuable guide while making the movie, said Mullin. All of the raw footage will be kept as an oral history of the area. The pair hopes to highlight some of the lesser recognized facts of the area. Foreign-born residents living on the Peninsula, for example, have made up about one-third of the population the entire time, he said. Despite the differences, the level of counterproductive tension remained low. This collaboration is what allowed successes like the airport and the biotech industry. The documentary will bring the faces of that collaboration to the forefront. There's a lot of interesting people, interesting stories to tell,? said Rubin. It's not always the most famous or wealthy person but if you look hard enough there are amazing interesting people. That's the best part.?
The documentary will premiere Thursday, Dec. 7 at the Little Fox Theatre in Redwood City
- Written by Fiona
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