Since March 2020, our lives have been impacted in a myriad of ways. We have shared the collective experience of a global pandemic, yet we have been more isolated from each other than ever before. In the same moment, the urgent call for racial justice had demanded a new level of individual reckoning and collective action. It’s impossible to ignore.
And so. We have become curious to uncover the living history of now.
History Is Now captures the stories of a group of unsung heroes who are working to support themselves and their communities during these extraordinary times. This documentary/oral history project highlights the diverse and cross-generational culture of West Hollywood through five contrasting perspectives:
Flo, the owner of iconic beauty salon Taylor Rose Hair Studio, who is as fearless in her commitment to the Black Lives Matter movement as she is in her leadership of her business and her devotion to the WeHo community.
Raisa, a ballroom-dancing powerhouse and pillar of WeHo’s Russian Jewish senior community who is unflaggingly optimistic about the future even as she mourns the current closure of her “alma mater,” Plummer Park.
Taylor, The Sparkle Queen, a young entrepreneur from New Jersey who is embracing the opportunity to shift her plant-based sparkle bar, from glittering music festival-goers to serving the community at socially distanced pop-ups.
Greg & Michelle, a design-savvy couple who launched their new venture, Barber Truck, on the eve of the pandemic, then transformed it into an experiential outdoor pop-up with Employees Only.
Becky, Jamie, Silvia, and Carla, the deeply committed, unflinchingly honest staff and board president of Being Alive, a WeHo-born nonprofit that has been helping people living with HIV and AIDS since 1986.
They are all experiencing this moment in a unique way that reflects their class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality as well as their passions, commitments, past experiences, and visions for the future.
History Is Now is created by three women writers and producers living in Los Angeles, each responding to this moment through our own intersecting identities and perspectives.
With this project, we are combining our collective experience to share real stories of this unprecedented and unsettling time — and, we hope, offering some inspiration for the times to come.