"My neighborhood, explain it...it's joy, peace, love, and happiness, and the best riding we can do," Richland Farm resident and town horseshoer, Andrew Johnson explains at the end of Birthing a New Compton, a short documentary video produced by high school students from Environmental Charter High School.

The video explores the Richland Farm community, a small agricultural pocket of Compton in South Los Angeles, demystifying society's negative portrayal of the area through popular culture and mass media. What the students from Lawndale discover is a much more peaceful and closely knit community of farmers and horse riders who all know each other and work together to maintain the area's unique "old country" vibrancy.

The students used the interview and b-roll footage that they shot for Departures' interactive documentary and sequenced the material into a more traditional, linear video. This piece was edited at the end of the Departures: Richland Farms project by three students who were invited to join KCET's New Media Department for the KCET Departures Summer Internship Program. Thank you, Debbie "Tachi" Vickers, Mariela Bautista, and Angeles Urban for doing such an amazing job!

To view the video, click on the link below.