Green and White:
Telling the ECHS Gaucho story

The request was simple enough: Would Kent Sanctuary, class of 1964, be interested in putting together a slideshow illustrating the history of El Cerrito High School to show during a three-day bash to celebrate the 64-year-old school before it was demolished to make way for a modern campus? A graphic designer by trade, he agreed to do it.

 By then, Sanctuary was living in Sacramento and came back to El Cerrito to meet with Lu Tipping and Joann Steck-Bayat who were helping to organize the event. But the project became something bigger.

 To tell the story, Sanctuary conducted video interviews with students from the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s and up to the early 2000s. He caught up with a former principal and a few teachers.

“It went from being a slideshow to a Ken Burns-style documentary,” Sanctuary said. “It was quite a project.”

 When finished, “Green and White: The Gaucho Story,” ran for 45 minutes and was shown in the girls’ gymnasium during the “Before the wrecking ball hits the Wall” last blast for the school. But Sanctuary wasn’t finished. He went on to add extra features, including scenes from the event itself.

Subsequently entered in the Berkeley Film Festival, the video earned honorable mention and was made available as a DVD. The project also encouraged Sanctuary to create a video highlighting the life of his son and his fiancee, which was shown at their wedding. The two projects also earned him a promotion at work as he added creating training videos to his duties.

“It really turned out to be quite a project,” he concluded.