After two years of work and research, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program’s two-part documentary on the history and the making of the Institute of Black Culture and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Cultures was shown this week.
The film, “The making of of IBC” and “The Making of La Casita” was shown Wednesday to an audience at the Multicultural and Diversity Affairs’ suite in the Reitz Union.
Aliya Miranda, a 21-year-old UF telecommunications senior, worked on the project as a digital productions coordinator at the SPOHP and co-directed the documentary with Juliette Barbara and Juanita Duque Serrano-Zúñiga.
In 2017 UF Administration announced plans to combine the IBC and La Casita into a single U-shaped building with a side for each organization and a common space.
Miranda said the decision to create the documentary came after the creation of the #NoLalBCita movement, a movement dedicated to keeping the buildings separate. Since then, construction plans have changed and the buildings will remain separate.
“In creating these documentaries, we hope to remind students that everything achieved and maintained on campus for Black and Latinx students was only made possible through student mobilization and constant vigilance,” Miranda said.
The interviews featured UF students and faculty discussing the history of the IBC and La Casita at UF. Interviewees discussed the struggles minorities at UF went through to create these groups and be given these spaces.
Omar Sanchez, a 20-year-old UF English junior, conducted some of the interviews for the documentary. He stressed the importance of telling the stories about how La Casita and IBC came to be.
“I hope that people will understand that there is a history to La Casita,” Sanchez said. “That there's more to the story than what the University tells us. That people fought to get La Casita and it is a place of activism.”
The funding for the documentary came from the Office of the Provost and Provost Joe Glover who agreed to allot $10,000 to the SPOHP to conduct research and create a product accessible to students, Dr.Paul Ortiz, director at the SPOHP said.
Currently, the documentary is scheduled to be screened again on Nov. 15 at the UF F.E.M. Film’s Community Conversations Film Festival and on Nov. 18 in room G315 at the Reitz Union.
Sanchez said the history of IBC and La Casita need to be shared.
“The documentary is important because no one talks about this history,” Sanchez said. “If I didn't work on this project then I wouldn't have known about the history.I wouldn't have known have much power students have to get things for our community.”
Students pass in front of the location of the newly renovated IBC and La Casita buildings.
Nora O'Neill is a fourth-year journalism and philosophy student and the Enterprise Editor for The Alligator. She previously served as the Avenue Editor and the business and economics beat reporter. In her free time you can find her reading books with no plot and abusing her Chemex.
