"We did whatever it took. We're a two-woman team," says first-time filmmaker Emily Sterling when we meet up at Perception Media's office in a converted bungalow on NE Broadway.
Sterling and Char Hutson's debut documentary, Arts Exit: Saving the Creative Kid, which was selected by the Hollywood Theatre for a fiscal sponsorship, tracks the human cost of gutted arts education in Portland's schools. The filmmakers' rationale is simple: They're both educators in Portland Public Schools. By day, Hutson's a community outreach coordinator who works with a caseload of 400-plus students, and Sterling directs a youth development middle school program. To make Arts Exit, Sterling and Hutson filmed and edited around the demands—and schedules—of their day jobs, tracking students' experiences in the wake of drastic cuts to arts education.
Hutson and Sterling wanted to see what impact those cuts have on students on the ground, and what they found is devastating: While the film intentionally avoids demonizing Portland Public Schools ("They did the best with what they could," says Sterling), it strongly suggests that for at least one of the students Sterling and Hutson shadowed, losing access to arts education meant the end of her education altogether.
