Welcome to “The Sights + Sounds Show with Jeneé Darden," where every week we tap into the Bay Area arts scene and bring you rich conversations with artists. On today’s show, the documentary “Wood Street,” about the West Oakland encampment has been selling out at film festivals. Host Jeneé Darden speaks with filmmaker Caron Creighton and long-time Wood Street resident and organizer John Janosko. Then, we revisit Jeneé's conversation with Andrew Durham, the director of the film “Fairyland.” Which is an adaptation of a true story that takes place in San Francisco.
Today's show is about Bay Area films keeping it real.
Caron Creighton and John Janosko
A new documentary has been selling out theaters at Bay Area film festivals. It’s called “Wood Street.” The film chronicles events at the West Oakland encampment leading up to the city shutting it down. Hundreds of unhoused people lived in Wood Street over the decade of its existence, making it one of the largest homeless encampments in Northern California. The documentary humanizes the residents by showing Wood Street as more than an encampment, but a community.
John Janosko was one of the key organizers of Wood Street residents, and very vocal against the city’s eviction of the encampment. He lived there for about a decade. Caron Creighton is a documentarian and award-winning journalist. "Wood Street" is her debut full-feature documentary.
“Wood Street” will be screening at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland on Wednesday, July 15.
Andrew Durham
The movie “Fairyland” is about a complicated, loving relationship between a father and daughter. It’s a film adaptation of the memoir by Alysia Abbot. Poet Steve Abbott and his young daughter Alysia move across the country to San Francisco, after his wife is killed in a car accident. He comes to the Bay Area, in part, to live as an openly gay man. Alysia and Steve Abbot’s relationship grows stronger when Alysia returns home from college to care for her dad because he contracted the AIDS virus. The movie begins in the 1970s.
Andrew Durham wrote and directed “Fairyland.” He is originally from Palo Alto. Sophia Coppola is one of the film’s producers. What’s really uncanny is that Andrew and Alysia Abbot had similar experiences with their fathers, around the same era. Host Jeneé Darden spoke with Andrew in 2025 about these parallels, and how he felt making his first film.
