Views of South Central from teens who want to heal a city’s wounds

While Los Angeles’ trials and tribulations became the topic of national discussion this year, six groups of young people were making videos about how the troubled city and its residents can heal.

A year after the first Rodney King verdict and subsequent riots, South Central Kid to Kid, featuring videos by youths age 11 to 18, is being aired by ABC.

Selected from a group of more than 200 of their peers, six writer-directors of diverse backgrounds picked four or five of their friends for a film crew assisted by USC Film School students.

“I want to show my generation that there are less violent ways to live,” says 17-year-old Benita Toshe Wyatt. Wyatt focuses, in a non-linear fashion, on a youth who suffers numerous beatings as a child and gives in to peer pressure that ultimately leads to his violent death. Wyatt, an African-American, says she was selected to make a film because she was able to verbalize the images that show “the power behind everything.”

Philippine-born Angela Amante, also 17, created an allegorical film about a man who is running away from the riots, until he realizes that many of the images are in his mind. For Amante, whose downtown Los Angeles family fled to suburban North Hollywood during the riots, it was cathartic.

“After awhile, I felt a sense of guilt about leaving,” she recalls. “I’m hoping that people will realize their fears. If you don’t face your problems, they’ll just get bigger and bigger.”

Some of the videos incorporate performance art, poetry and depictions of the gritty reality of living in the city.

Also included will be information for kids on social action they can take as an alternative to social unrest, as well as a profile of a YWCA drill team.

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“South Central Kid to Kid” airs Saturday 11 a.m.-noon on ABC. For ages 8 and up.

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