“‘American Pot Story: Oaksterdam’ Celebrates Hollywood Premiere”

The feature film “American Pot Story: Oaksterdam” has its Hollywood premiere on Thursday, June 29th at the Dances With Films Festival in Los Angeles. Festivities are planned for the event, including a performance by cannabis icon Tommy Chong and a question-and-answer session with the film’s directors. Dan Katzir and Ravit Markus. The premiere continues a successful run of screenings of the film about Oakland-based cannabis training school Oaksterdam University’s cannabis legalization efforts, including the world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in January, which won the prestigious Audience Award for Unstoppable Feature.

American Pot Story: Oaksterdam follows two of the driving forces behind the institution, Founder Richard Lee and Acting Chancellor Dale Skye Jones, through a pivotal decade for both the pioneering cannabis academy and marijuana legalization movement.

“In 2010, we read in the newspaper that a group of activists said they were conducting legalization action in California,” director Dan Katzir explains in a virtual interview. “To us it seemed like the media was laughing at them and treating them as potheads who think they can change policies that will never be changed.”

Courtesy of American Pot Story

Film documents more than 10 years of activism

Katzir and Markus followed Jones and Lee’s campaign for Proposition 19, the 2010 ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana in California, which received nearly 47% of the vote. The effort resulted in the film Legalize It, but the proposal’s failure in the elections gave the film a “sad ending,” says Katzir.

“We didn’t want to end our journey into the world of cannabis activism with this sad defeat,” he continues. “We felt that the story of marijuana policy reform was not over, so we decided to make a new film about Oaksterdam, America’s first cannabis school, turning all of downtown Oakland into a hub of marijuana resistance transformed.”

Jones says in a phone interview that she found watching herself “American Pot Story: Oaksterdam” “borderline insufferable” when she first saw the film. But overall she is quite happy with the result.

“I’m so terribly proud of the story they were able to tell,” she says. “It really captured the essence of what we wanted to convey.”

To gain support for Proposition 19, the campaign focused primarily on how marijuana prohibition and the resulting War on Drugs have consumed resources that could be used for other purposes, including public education.

“My job is to connect everything you hold dear to the drug war,” Jones explains. “Because I promise, the drug war is just a degree of disconnect from stealing resources from something you care about, maybe someone you care about.”

“Once you can start separating the cost of a prison sentence versus the cost of getting a person into college or, more importantly, the cost of a preschool placement, it really starts to take hold,” she adds added. “And I think that’s what this film does.”

The film also follows the development of Oaksterdam over more than a decade, including a 2012 DEA raid that many attribute to the efforts to pass Proposition 19. The film also follows the push to draft a new initiative that led to the legalization of cannabis in California in 2016.

Hollywood premiere this week

The Hollywood premiere of American Pot Story: Oaksterdam takes place on Thursday, June 29th at the TCL Chinese Theaters on Hollywood Boulevard as part of the Dances With Films Festival. Through July 2, 2023, Dances With Film will celebrate its 25th anniversary and will feature screenings of more than 250 films.

Following the premiere there will be a Q&A with Katzir and Markus as well as film participants Dale Sky Jones, Jeffrey Jones and actor Tommy Chong. Later, an afterparty for ticket holders and special guests will be held at Teddy’s Nightclub in the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

The directors of American Pot Story: Oaksterdam hope to see the film at more events throughout the summer and have applied to several other film festivals for consideration. They are also vying to be selected by a streaming platform, a process Katzir says fans can support by following the film on Instagram and Facebook.