By These Streets
By These Streets Is a coming of age story about three girls growing up in the Mission neighborhood in San Francisco in the late 70’s. A story that is based on true events of real women.
By These Streets
is a coming of age story of three best friends, Maria-Alma, Maria-Lili, and Maria-Lucia, AKA the MGirls. Set in the Mission District of San Francisco, we catch up with the girls in 1977, their final years of high school. The gas crisis in the country has forced the Bay Area to create a public transportation system: BART. But with the building of the train comes changes to the neighborhood and the displacement of businesses and homes. Throughout the course of a pinnacle year we follow the MGirls as they navigate the changes in their neighborhood, growing pains, teen pregnancy and questions about their future.
The Mission SF was a special place in 1977. At its prime, this barrio housed a colorful array of hispanic immigrants who took the idea of the American Dream and ran with it. These MGirls are nothing short of the product of their environment. These four teens are shaped by Hispanic and American values, rooted in being a family member to everyone around them, and embodying the spirit of their immigrant predecessors. As a group, they are a force to be reckoned with. They were raised by a neighborhood vibrant with murals on every corner; where beautiful lowriders cruised down 24th, social advocators lead peaceful protests, noises of music and laughter poured out of every building and everyone lived for each other.
The girls find themselves faced with each other's own familial strife from alcoholism, neglect, gang violence and drugs to having their own morals tested when faced with the same things. Through the connection of their friendship the MGirls rise above as they find that what has brought them turmoil has also brought strength.
“Lucky for us, the Mission always took care of us, even when our families couldn’t. It didn’t matter because we were each other’s families. It had been like that for as long as I could remember.”
Through it all, Alma, Alicia, Lucia, and Lili are still teen girls who make sure to fit in time to chase after boys, sneak into clubs, salsa dance, and enjoy the last bloom of the 1970's in San Francisco. Senior year will be a year these girls will never forget!
MGirls has been our passion project for the past seven years. After working on the script together for a year and a half we were itching to put something together so we could show it to the world. We couldn’t keep this story between just the two of us for much longer, we needed to share it. That’s when Giovana floated the idea that we should make a proof of concept, take a section of our screenplay and film it to show to investors, producers, anyone who wanted to help make the whole movie. This was in November 2017. By February 2018, we had wrapped on a full weekend of shooting a pivotal scene of the MGirls.
With Giovana's initial investment of $11,000 we raised an additional $7,000 to bring this proof of concept to life. Janette directed and Giovana starred as Maria-Lucia. With this 10 minute scene we want to show that it’s not just the MGirls people should invest in, but the two of us as storytellers. Producing this proof of concept was one of the toughest and most rewarding things that we’ve done and we are so excited that it came together with such an amazing cast and crew.
We wish we could show you the whole movie RIGHT NOW! But first we need to find some people to help us make the movie and then we need to film it, edit it, have a huge movie release all over the country, become super famous, etc. etc. Just kidding. Except about the part of wanting to show you the movie. We hope you're just as excited as we are to experience the MGirls!
Behind The Screenplay
We believe this story is one that people must hear. This is a story in the voice of minority women, this is a story about both sides of gentrification, this is a story of hope for the children growing up in a neighborhood where hope is not abundant. And most importantly, this is a true story.
The MGirls are real women who lived their lives as fully as they possibly could and we are lucky to know them and even luckier that they are letting us tell this story. It’s not just a story about these four teenage girls but how they reflect the larger changes of the world happening around them. What these girls faced in 1977 are what teenagers continue to face today.
“I grew up feeling like I was born into a girl gang. Surrounded by a strong willed pack of women, I’ve called all of them ‘mom.’ There was something I could never pinpoint about these women. Their friendship always astounded me. Although there were many members of this girl gang, the numbers never diluted their bond. This brought me to a big question, ‘How did these women come together? And how deep could their bond still be after multiple decades?’ So I started to reflect and I started to ask questions of all my moms and everything seemed to be solved with one answer: If you’re from the neighborhood, you’re part of the pack. Because it was in La Mission neighborhood that these beautiful souls, for better and worse, were raised together.
That’s why when there was the MGirls (later re-titled to By These Street) story in my head it felt so real to me; it felt like it was my story. I knew it wasn’t mine - it was more than that, it was the story of so many girls who were raised by a family bigger than their own.
After so much time spent creating the fictional MGirls, based on the multitudes of MGirls I knew in real life, I started to become invested in their well being. I felt their woes and celebrated their triumphs. What I realized is it wasn’t the characters I was necessarily rooting for but for their spirit, and the spirit in the real girls that have lived these lives and are still living today. This story felt like mine, because it was the one that raised me. The girls in the story exemplify the spirit of the women I have been so blessed to know and who continue to set an example of what it means to face life with the resilience, courage, and love for everyone around them.
This is not a story Janette and I just wanted to tell, but a story we thought was needed. So any little girl in a tumultuous situation wondering if she could, knows she can. ”
The past couple years have seemed like banner years for women. We had the first woman candidate of a major political party run for president. We had the first woman-led (and directed) superhero film come out as the most popular movie of the year. The #MeToo and Times Up Movements have dominated our conversations as women demand bigger strides towards equality. And while it seems like we keep moving forward, the statistics are still dire. According to the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, women make up only 7% of directors, 20% of writers, and 23% of producers. Now is the time to change the numbers and invest in women’s stories. Not just because it’s fair or it’s the right thing to do, but because women have amazing stories to tell that can reach audiences on a global level.
Obviously, we’re women (surprise!) and we want to tell the stories of young women making their way in the world that we feel we didn’t necessarily have or see growing up. We not only want to put our voices out there but we want to help shape the new narratives coming forward and drive it in a direction that is more inclusive and understanding of all stories.
Source: https://seejane.org/symposiums-on-gender-in-media/gender-bias-without-borders/
Mission, San Francisco
Music, Activism, Salsa dancing, Lowriders, Gentrification, Community. These are just a few of the things the Mission neighborhood housed in the 70's that would culturally imprint it on America's memory forever. This neighborhood and many others like it host a multitude of lessons we can still learn from about what it really means to be a neighbor.
The 1970s were a crazy time, to say the least, and no city faced that more than San Francisco. People flocked to the city by the bay in the ‘60s to experience the free love movement. When all of that came crashing down in 1969, all of the free-loving hippies turned into “Holy shit I need a job and a place to live” yuppies and the Bay experienced an influx of people moving to the suburbs.
Flash forward to the late ‘70s, The United States is facing a gas crisis due to the conflicts and tension in the Middle East. People who lived in the suburbs of San Francisco but worked in the city were freaking out over how they are going to get to work when they could barely afford the gas. Introducing: BART or Bay Area Rapid Transit. As two girls from the Bay Area, BART has been apart of our lives for our all whole lives. It’s how we quantify what is actually in the Bay or not, it’s how we get into the city, it’s the public transportation we love to hate. We never really knew the whole story until we started writing this screenplay.
The Mission is known as the “sunny spot” in San Francisco because no matter what the weather is like anywhere else, the sun always seems to be shining in the Mission. Over the course of the 20th century, a beautiful and vibrant immigrant community flourished in the Mission. Known for its murals and family-like community, the Mission was a little known slice of paradise for those who had come to America searching for a new life. That is until BART got involved.
With the building of the 24th & Mission Street station, attention was finally brought to the sunny barrio and it quickly rose on the “desirable” places to live list due to how close it was to Downtown SF. The housing crisis of the mission took full force during this time with rents increasing by three, four and even seven times what they originally were in a single year. People were forced out of the area as property owners made huge profits off of selling apartment buildings.
Not only do our MGirls have to deal with the changing facade of their neighborhood, increased gas prices, but also during the late ‘70s the entire Bay Area, and young women in particular, were frightened by the Zodiac Killer. The rising tension of this neighborhood about to come to a head is the perfect backdrop to exploring the lives of teenagers who are desperately trying to lead normal lives despite their surroundings demanding more of them.
Flashforward to today, and we see a similar trend happening again. With the tech boom in Silicon Valley, the Mission is known more for its “hipsters” than as the first place on the west coast were you could buy a burrito. This is what made this story seems so urgent and relevant to us today.
