San Francisco locals know the streets of the city's warmest district well, many spend their days shopping, feasting at taquerias, or sipping lattes at cafés. Others spend morning, afternoon, and night in kitchens, clothing stores, or offices. It is where people live, work, and play: the Mission, a colorful and bustling district of San Francisco.

A group of seven local filmmakers, including Lise Swenson, director and former SF State professor, wanted to reveal the spark of this culturally diverse hot spot and decided to make a movie about it. They feature, appropriately titled, “Mission Movie (Una Pelicula de la Mision),” was shown Wednesday, Oct. 13 at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

The stories and characters are all based on real life, played by up and coming actors and actresses. Inner turmoil transforms this bilingual community film into an urban drama about the daily battle for territory and belonging. A third-generation Mission resident owns a restaurant and begins to question her success after her car is keyed. A Central American immigrant’s wife thrives in a community but he feels completely out of place. A group of twenty-something hipsters are about to be evicted from their apartment and decide to protest—just to name a few.

The tales are all too familiar, residents of the world somehow uniting in San Francisco to gain independence, respect, a place of their own. It strikes a chord with immigrants everywhere, whether migrating from southern California or the depths of Palestine. And these stories are found right around the corner from SF State’s campus.

Harjant Gill, who is studying anthropology and human sexuality at SF State, was the casting director and part of the writing team for "Mission Movie." He is one of several who saw the project develop from its birth in 2002 until today as they work with distributors and participate in film festivals. And he, just like the rest of the cast and crew, did it for free.

“It took me awhile to undo the damage,” said Gill of the abundant hours he put in during the project, “I was going to school full time and working on two other films…I didn’t have a social life for a long time.”

However, Gill said there were a few perks: free alcohol, accommodations at hotels, travel, tickets to film festivals, and meeting a lot of cool people.

Gill met Swenson through her work at TILT, an organization that works with marginalized youth allowing them to make their voices heard through mediums such as film. She was looking for students to help with the project and Gill came highly recommended, the director said.

Swenson, who has been a film activist for several years, received a Creative Work Fund Grant to finance the film with the idea of making the project on a grand scale, working with diverse people from the community, she said.

The group organized a board of directors, the Community Advisory Group (CAG) made of artists and organizers involved with the Mission community. The filmmakers spent a significant amount of time sitting down with board members, interviewing them about their experiences in the Mission, and molding their stories into a script.

“[The board of directors] represented different ages, genders, sexual preferences, ethnicities, economic backgrounds… and we pumped these people to tell their stories,” said Swenson.

The film, winner of best feature award at the New York International Latino Film Festival, rooted itself in a diverse foundation; and the script explores the several avenues that the Mission district represents—from the corporate people at Starbucks to the labor union worker.

This was what inspired Swenson and her colleagues to pursue a film exploring this phenomenon. “It’s vibrant, it’s challenging, it’s never quite what you expect,” she said of the Mission, her home for over fourteen years, “I really enjoy being around people from different backgrounds… The Mission really educated me, and it awakened my sense of justice and my sense of living in a multi perspective world.”

Swenson taught in the Interarts center (IAC) at SF State for 7 years. She did her undergraduate and graduate work over many years and then ended up teaching. "Unfortunately the ill-advised and mean administration shut us down,” she said.

It is these kinds of films that were produced in that department, but it was one of several that met its demise during budget crunches.

Swenson’s ambitions with this movie are to prove to the world at large that films outside the normal mainstream can thrive.

“It was a big fuck you to mainstream film making,” said Gill.

The film does have flaws, he said, and it received a lot of negative criticism regarding the film’s size and motives—a community collaborative film attempting to be a feature film.

“It’s low budget, it’s my first film as a feature director, and the first film by this group of people,” said Swenson. “It has some naïve qualities to it. But people feel it’s sincerity, it surprises me how much people like this movie.”

Gill is one of the several participants that represents diversity among the cast and crew. Born and raised in Chandigarh, India, Gill experienced the contradictions of his homeland’s environment.

He saw the amount of discussion that issue driven films, either about the caste system or homosexuality in India, sparked and was amazed, he said.

“Films aren’t just about an agenda,” said Gill, “It’s about empowering people… And media is a really powerful tool.”

Similar to his own background, the folks portrayed in Mission movie are forced to bring their former life experience with them to a new, and sometimes unwelcoming, environment.

For additional information on the film, cast, and crew visit www.missionmovie.org