All That I Can Be

Educational Video Center
Antonio Abreu
Plinio Cabrera
William Knox
Joseph Lawler
Krista Pastecchi
Yana Rafailova

See "Producers"

Documentary
Short Film

More About All That I Can Be from Producer Educational Video Center

All That I Can Be was produced and edited at the Educational Video Center (EVC) in midtown Manhattan over the course of the 2004-2005 school year. Students met four days a week for four hours a day, sometimes staying late and coming in on the weekends during their most intense stages of production. The crew consisted of six students (all in high school with the exception of Krista who was attending her first semester at Queensborough Community College) and their instructor, Rodney Mitchell. All the interviews in All That I Can Be were shot in New York City with the exception of a shoot in Pennsylvania and one at Fort Dix in New Jersey where Youth Organizers Television (YO-TV) students were granted the rare opportunity to bring cameras inside the base.

All That I Can Be comes from a personal perspective. The producers themselves experienced military recruiter visits and phone calls. They also had friends — some of whom were classmates from the Educational Video Center — signing up to join the military. They came from the same neighborhoods and shared dreams of pursuing film and video as a career. Co-producer Antonio Abreu wrote: “William, one of the main characters in All That I Can Be, and I both used to live in the same neighborhood. I could easily fall into that category of ‘person who can’t make it financially.’ There are more advertisements for chain store jobs than there are for photography groups and poetry slams. People I know are joining the military because they need money for college and they don’t want to work at McDonald’s like they did in high school.”

After basic training, William Solomon was stationed at a military base in Alaska. In January 2005, his unit was deployed to Iraq. EVC called the mother of William’s best friend in New York City later that month to find out news about him. As of May 2005, we have confirmed that William is in Iraq, but his friend’s mother has not heard from him and has no way to reach him.

FILMMAKER BIOS

Antonio Abreu, Co-Producer

Antonio is a graduate of the Schomburg Satellite Academy High School and an alumni of the Educational Video Center’s Basic Documentary Workshop and Youth Organizers Television (YO-TV), where he co-produced the documentaries The Quest To Express, Not Me, Not Mine and All That I Can Be. In the summer of 2003, Antonio assisted in building homes with a Habitat for Humanity project in Melbourne, Australia. In the following summer, he attended the In-Sight Photography Exposure Program on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Antonio is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College and is working in marketing, distribution and outreach at the Educational Video Center.

Plinio Cabrera, Co-Producer

Plinio is from Washington Heights, New York City. He is a graduate of Vanguard High School and is currently studying film and video at the State University of New York, Purchase College. While co-producing All That I Can Be, Plinio also served as a member of the selection committee for the March 2004 Urban Visionaries Film Festival at New York City’s Museum of Television and Radio. Plinio is a graduate of the Educational Video Center’s Basic Documentary Workshop where he co-produced a documentary on youth activism titled Whose Streets? Our Streets!

William Knox, Co-Producer

William lives on Roosevelt Island in New York City and attends City As School in Brooklyn. Before co-producing All That I Can Be, Will worked on two documentaries: Education to Occupation and Fighting to Learn, both of which were completed through the Educational Video Center’s Basic and Advanced Documentary Workshops. In the summer of 2003, William was selected to attend the New York State Summer Arts Institute. This December, Will was one of five New York City youth invited to participate in the P.O.V. Youth Views Institute, an intensive training in media literacy and screening facilitation for twenty youth activists from across the country. Will has recently been selected to continue his work as part of the P.O.V. Youth Views Advisory Board where he will be co-authoring a youth discussion guide to accompany a selected documentary from the P.O.V. archives.

Joseph Lawler, Co-Producer

Joseph is a graduate of City As School High School in New York City and all three of the Educational Video Center’s documentary video programs. Joe co-produced Education to Occupation in Basic Doc Workshop, Fighting to Learnin Advanced Doc Workshop and All That I Can Be in the Youth Organizers Television Program. Joe is currently working at the Educational Video Center as their resident A/V Tech Assistant. He also teaches youth about bicycle maintenance and environmental activism as a staff person at Recycle A Bicycle in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Joe will soon be teaching a video workshop for youth as an internship program at Recycle A Bicycle.

Krista Pastecchi, Co-Producer

Krista is from Bayside Queens in New York City. Krista is a graduate of the Educational Video Center’s Youth Organizers Television and a co-producer of All That I Can Be. Krista is currently working towards her Associates Degree at the City University of New York’s Queensborough Community College. Through her experience at EVC, she is now interested in writing screenplays and hopes to pursue this as part of her coursework.

Yana Rafailova, Co-Producer

Yana is currently a senior at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. Yana is a graduate of the Educational Video Center’s Youth Organizers Television Program and a co-producer of All That I Can Be. She also completed a community service internship with the Educational Video Center’s Teacher Development Program where she assisted in editing a reel of student-produced PSAs for EVC’s Media Literacy and Violence Prevention Project.

Educational Video Center, Production Company

The Educational Video Center is a not-for-profit media arts center dedicated to helping New York City youth develop skills in documentary production and media literacy while nurturing their idealism, intellectual development and commitment to social activism. Over the last twenty years, EVC has evolved from a single video workshop for teens from Manhattan’s Lower East Side into an organization with three major programs that has enhanced the educational opportunities of over 10,000 underserved and ethnically diverse students.

Each year, the most talented and committed graduates of the Documentary Workshop further develop their skills as media-makers through Youth Organizers Television (YO-TV), a paid ten-month internship program. Producing a video commissioned by a client, the YO-TV crewmembers make important professional contacts and work in an environment of support as they transition from high school into college and the media job market. YO-TV projects have included a nationally broadcast documentary for a Bill Moyers PBS series, the official video for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1993 Biennial Exhibition, a piece on the International Criminal Court for Human Rights Watch and a documentary for the Child Welfare Fund about adult survivors of the foster care system. YO-TV graduates have gone on to work in broadcast, cable and independent media organizations including NBC, NY-1 News, ParadeMagazine, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and the PBS documentary series P.O.V.