{"id":806030,"date":"2026-08-07T19:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T19:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/806030\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T19:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T19:24:09","slug":"caron-creighton-on-her-wood-street-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/806030\/","title":{"rendered":"Caron Creighton On Her \u2018Wood Street\u2019 Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wood Street<\/a> encampment in Oakland, once Northern California\u2019s largest homeless encampment, was demolished in 2023, displacing an estimated 300 residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The eviction process was protracted and followed a series of complex legal battles led by residents of the encampment, who organized as a collective to advocate for their rights. Caron Creighton<\/a>, a Bay Area-based filmmaker, captured their fight as part of her feature debut Wood Street, which screens this week at the BlackStar Film Festival<\/a> in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Creighton first learned of the encampment and its residents when she was working as a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn, one of the main participants in the film, had been hosting a series of parties at Wood Street and would invite people to come,\u201d Creighton explains. \u201cAs a journalist, I went to one of those parties and began to meet people from the community. Quickly it became clear the community wasn\u2019t this scary place as people had described.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the Wood Street residents received an eviction notice in 2022, Creighton quit her job and began documenting their efforts to stop the eviction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI bought a nicer camera and just started going there every day,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wood Street runs for around 100 minutes, and it is a sobering watch. The story unravels with urgency. There are no sad backstories or manipulative needle drops. Creighton places the viewer at the heart of the action, the majority of which she shot solo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI shot maybe 95% of it myself,\u201d Creighton explains. \u201cI had one camera, a Canon C70 with a shotgun mic. And then I would put one lav mic on whoever I was filming that day. Sometimes I would even just throw my phone in the mix and hit record.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Wood Street residents don\u2019t shy away from Creighton\u2019s camera, and they make for compelling characters on screen. John Janosko and LaMont\u00e9 Ford, two long-term residents of Wood Street, are Creighton\u2019s main protagonists. The pair help to organize and inspire their neighbors throughout the legal battle with the City.\u00a0By the time Creighton had begun filming them, she explains, they had become accustomed to media attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t new. There was a lot of press there, and they were really struggling to maintain their community, so they wanted all of the press they could get,\u201d Creighton says. \u201cBut I think getting them to trust me happened by showing up every day and spending time where I wasn\u2019t filming. I might be there for eight hours, but I\u2019m only filming for two hours. I lived close by, so I\u2019d come back a couple of times per day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creighton has been screening Wood Street across Oakland and the Bay Area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just did three local screenings, and all of them were sold out, so it\u2019s really cool that people are interested in this story,\u201d she explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film has also screened at a series of doc festivals, including the San Francisco Documentary Festival, before heading to BlackStar. After BlackStar, the film will play a range of regional U.S. fests before Creighton aims to lock in distribution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had distributors ask me, are there any celebrities that care about homelessness?\u201d Creighton jokes, explaining that making the film accessible to people is far more interesting to her than some sort of contrived celebrity impact campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of educational distributors work with Kanopy, which allows you to watch the film for free if you have a library card, which is amazing. For me, accessibility is really important,\u201d Creighton says.\u00a0\u201cI know a lot of people don\u2019t love that PBS now puts films on YouTube, but I kind of like that. I really want poor and unhoused people to be able to see the film, so that is appealing to me. I just want something accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creighton adds with a smile, \u201cAnywhere good that doesn\u2019t cost me money to put it on would be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creighton has also screened the film for members of the former Wood Street community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did an outdoor screening on Wood Street for the folks who are still living out there, and that was so powerful,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority seem to really like the film and believe it is a great representation of their story. Homeless people in general have been subject to so much media coverage without their input. I think they appreciate the time that was put in. A lot of them actually kept asking, Where\u2019s the second film? But I don\u2019t have the time or capacity for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unfortunate reality of independent filmmaking in 2026, Creighton explains that despite sold-out screenings and opening a feature at multiple festivals across the country, she is now back looking for full-time jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to pay my rent,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d love to make more films, but to be honest, at this point, there is no straight career path for an indie filmmaker. You can\u2019t live grant to grant. It\u2019s just not doable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creighton produced the film alongside Estevan Padilla. Tiffany Fisher-Love was a consulting producer alongside Kelsey Oliver, who served as the associate producer. Eavvon O\u2019Neal edited the film alongside Creighton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film screens on August 9 at BlackStar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wood Street encampment in Oakland, once Northern California\u2019s largest homeless encampment, was demolished in 2023, displacing an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[44883,342109,88,206,74753],"class_list":["post-806030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-blackstar-film-festival","tag-caron-creighton","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-wood-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}