Images of a Brief Life : Student’s Video Inspires Autobiographical Project by Teacher and Classmates

“I am a senior at Bell High School. This is my story.” With these simple words, Lissette Elizondo’s video autobiography, “A Life of Hope,” begins.

Until Elizondo turned in her class project to video productions teacher Ed Murphy last spring, no student had completed such an assignment. Murphy did not have particularly high expectations for Elizondo’s video, but agreed to view it.

What he saw was an emotionally powerful story told in a clear and direct style. Little did Murphy or his students know at the time that Elizondo was in the last months of her life.

One of the video’s first scenes focuses on a photograph of Elizondo with relatives and friends crammed onto a long sofa as she narrates childhood memories of Mexico.

“I was born in Mexico City. My family was composed of my mother, my father, two sisters, one brother and me. We were a very close family. We liked to sing, play games, go to movies--have fun together.”

Another frame shows her smile flashing beneath a big, floppy straw hat as she poses on a city street.

Set to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” Elizondo’s story unfolds with stark eloquence; she poses again, this time in a doctor’s office at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles.

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She explains that at 13 she was found to have familial nephritis, an acute inflammation of the kidney, which caused the deaths of both of her sisters and her brother.

“The doctor did not want to take care of me in Mexico,” she says matter-of-factly. “I had no choice but go to the U.S. to look for my treatment. . . . I have been on the waiting list for two years, and I’m still waiting for a transplant.”

In Elizondo’s two-minute video, Murphy said he saw a young girl discovering herself, her family and culture and sharing it in a simple yet dramatic way.

Therein lies the importance of his course, Murphy said, not only in the understanding of video technology, but also in using it so that students can study and communicate their feelings about life, family and values.

After viewing Elizondo’s video with his students, Murphy made the video autobiography a mandatory project in all three of his yearlong radio/television classes.

The class assignment requires that the students in grades nine through 12 produce their own videos using the camcorders and editing system in the school’s 300-square-foot production room.

Three to five students form a production company, with catchy names such as “Border Brothers & Sisters” and “Crooked I.” The company approves each film script and shoots and edits the videos. The students then view the “movie premieres,” about three each week, in the classroom.

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In producing the videos, the students, mostly of Mexican or Central American descent, said they sifted through old photos in cardboard boxes, telephoned distant relatives and asked their parents about grandparents and great-grandparents. The videos, similar to Elizondo’s movie, use photographs and footage shot from home, school and vacation sites.

“My movie is about me, my life and my parents,” said 16-year-old Sandra Montero. “I looked at my life positively like Lissette did.”

Tenth-grader Silvia Murguia said that by speaking with relatives she learned more about her grandfather, Ramiro Vega, whom she recalled teaching songs to her when she was very young.

“I wanted to make a movie about my grandfather instead of myself,” Murguia said. “He is everything I ever want to be.”

Set to Duke Ellington’s “Hot Feet,” her video tells the story of her grandfather, who moved from Los Angeles to Mexico and was honored for teaching English to high school students there for 48 years.

About 50 videos have been shown so far in the white-walled classroom, most of them sprinkled with familial themes the students said were inspired by Elizondo’s story.

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Many classmates say they didn’t know her. They recalled her as “always happy” and “studious,” a quiet student who sat patiently at her desk.

“She was my best friend,” said Yadzaret Peregrina, a senior at the high school. “I think she gave people a lot of hope.”

Elizondo, who entered Bell High School speaking very little English, graduated in the top 10% of her class last spring and planned to attend Cal State L.A., according to her teachers.

In August, faculty and students at the high school heard that Elizondo had received a kidney transplant.

In November, her body rejected the kidney. Elizondo died at age 18. Her mother immediately flew back to Mexico City where her daughter was buried.

Recalling the image of her daughter on the video, her mother, Coco Elizondo, said in an interview from Mexico City:

“She always had a beautiful smile on her lips. She was like a rose, pure and beautiful.”

In life, Elizondo did not dwell on her own condition, but spoke of her father, who died while she was receiving medical care in Los Angeles. At the end of her video, he stands beside her in front of a frosty white birthday cake.

“Last October, my father died because of a heart attack. He was in Mexico. My mom and I could not go to his funeral,” she recounts. “It was one of the saddest moments of my life.”