Oscar Nod Puts Watts Group in Limelight

For years Michele Ohayon was a shadow.

With cameras rolling, Ohayon followed six young people from Watts, filming them in school, in their homes and, in one case, in jail.

The result is “Colors Straight Up,” a moving documentary that tells the story of their lives and dilemmas. Early Tuesday morning, four years after embarking on the project, Ohayon received the call every filmmaker yearns for: The documentary has been nominated for an Academy Award.

“I’d hoped, but I was definitely surprised,” said Ohayon, the documentary’s director and co-producer. “To me it’s not about the nomination, it’s about the fact that the movie will now be seen by many more people. It can really inspire [teenagers] and give them a way out.”

And inspiration, Ohayon said, is the aim of the project.

The documentary centers on youth involved in Living Literature / Colors United, an after-school performing and visual arts program that was started at Jordan High School in Watts.

With its local performances such as “Watts Side Story,” a version of “West Side Story” adapted to a Los Angeles setting, and an appearance at President Clinton’s inauguration, the group uses the arts to motivate young people to overcome obstacles in their lives.

“There were a lot of things I was curious about and Colors United provided that exposure and that confidence to go out there and look into those things,” said Oscar Sierra, 23, one of the film’s subjects.

The notion of survival appealed to Ohayon, who contacted the group and began doing research in Watts.

“People ask me, ‘Weren’t you afraid?’ ” said Ohayon, who was raised in Israel. “I’ve made films in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Live ammunition, I’m used to.”

She had tackled weighty issues before on film--”It Was A Wonderful Life,” a documentary on homeless women in the U.S. and “Pressure,” a fictional story of an Arab-Jewish love affair. But Ohayon was concerned about how a “white Jewish girl going to Watts” would be perceived, she said.

Members of the group welcomed her with “a bear hug that transcended race,” she said.

“I opened my house to her,” said LaToya Howlett, who appears in the film. “She met my mom, some of my sisters. Everybody in the neighborhood really appreciated what she was doing and how positive she was. They saw that she was real and that she still comes around.”

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With her now 5-year-old daughter in tow, Ohayon showed up for Colors United rehearsals, and at any time anything was happening to the principals in the documentary.

For a year she followed the young people without filming. She spent about another year with the camera. What she captured were stories of strength and transformation, Ohayon said.

“The whole year I kept being surprised and amazed by their energy, by the positiveness of their attitudes in spite of the negative circumstances that they come from and still live in,” she said. “Like every film I make, I feel this has changed my life as well. It made me reevaluate what I have, the things I take for granted.”

Now Sierra is a student at Pasadena City College and a yoga teacher who dreams of studying theater at Yale.

When he was a teenager, both of his parents were shot and seriously wounded in a robbery, and he felt the pressure. He sold marijuana, stole cars and held “ditch parties.”

While Ohayon was making the documentary, Sierra called her--from jail.

“It was like, ‘Please come and bring the cameras,’ ” said Sierra, who had been arrested for unpaid tickets.

By then he had already performed with Living Literature / Colors United and was turning his life around, he said. He was hoping his involvement in the film project would help convince officials that he was more than an irresponsible, delinquent youth--and it did.

“For young people, once you get established in the system it’s very hard to break out of that,” he said.

The documentary is an “acknowledgment that part of the struggle I’ve broken through,” he said. “Now there’s another one that I have to encounter.

“When you become a real student, there’s so many things you have to deal with and there’s a whole other culture you’re putting yourself into.”

The documentary combines scenes from the lives of the youth, on stage and off. In one scene Howlett plays a deceased 16-year-old who is appealing to the living. Another scene comes from an actual funeral in Watts. A mother, grieving over the body of her son, cries: “You know I tried.”

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For Howlett, the documentary and the nomination are validation that others recognize the value and the lessons that can be learned from the survival of young people who grew up in difficult situations.

“Every time I see it, it brings tears to my eyes,” Howlett said. “To have people recognize this as being something good and not negative is really inspirational. When I see young kids watching it, and they say, ‘Wow I want to be like that person on the screen,’ it makes me feel real good.”

Howlett went from being a Jordan High student with a “nasty attitude” and a bad temper to a performer in Living Literature / Colors United and then to a television actress. After a casting director paid a visit to Colors United, Howlett landed the role of Alvina in “Dangerous Minds.”

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“She was pretty much how I used to be--thugged out, didn’t care about school,” she said of her television character. “I was smart, but I was bad too.”

Working on the documentary has given her an opportunity to see herself through different eyes.

“Every time I see the documentary, I learn something new about myself,” she said. “This is what I went through. And here I am now, encouraging people to do right, when a couple of years ago I was encouraging them to do wrong.”

Even before Tuesday’s Oscar nomination in the documentary feature category, the film had earned widespread praise.

It had stacked up eight national awards, including the CINE Golden Eagle Award in Washington and the Silver Award at the Chicago International Film Festival.

It opens at the Laemmle Grande Theater in downtown Los Angeles Friday and this weekend at the Laemmle Theater in Santa Monica.

“We’re hoping that the nomination will give us a broad-based marketing tool so that people will understand who we are and what we’re doing,” said Shirley Quarmyne, executive director of Living Literature / Colors United.

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From its start at Jordan High, Living Literature / Colors United has expanded to Venice and Locke high schools, the East Los Angeles Skills Center, Gompers and Mark Twain middle schools and Cal State Los Angeles.

“There’s so much that we still need, from food for snacks, transportation and support services for these young people,” Quarmyne said.

“We hope the nomination will assist us in broadening our programs at our core site schools.”

For Ohayon, whether the documentary takes home the Oscar or not, she has already won lasting friendships with the young people in the film.

“Even though the movie’s finished they’re still like my family,” she said.