The feature film American Pot Story: Oaksterdam will have its Hollywood premiere on Thursday, June 29 at the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles, with festivities planned for the event including an appearance from weed icon Tommy Chong and a Q&A with the film’s directors, Dan Katzir and Ravit Markus. The premiere continues a successful string of screenings for the film about the cannabis legalization efforts of Oakland-based cannabis training school Oaksterdam University, including the world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in January that garnered the prestigious Audience Award for Unstoppable Feature.
American Pot Story: Oaksterdam follows two of the driving forces behind the institution, founder Richard Lee and executive chancellor Dale Skye Jones, over a pivotal decade for both the pioneering cannabis college and the marijuana legalization movement.
“In 2010, we read in the newspaper that a group of activists was saying they’re going to do a legalization ballot measure in California,” director Dan Katzir explains in a virtual interview. “To us, it seemed like the media was laughing at them in their faces treating them as stoners that think they can change a policy that will never be changed.”
Courtesy 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 to legalize recreational marijuana in California that captured nearly 47% of the vote. The effort led to the film Legalize It, but the proposition’s failure at the polls gave the film a “sad ending,” says Katzir.
“We didn’t want to end our journey into this world of cannabis activism with that sad defeat,” he continues. “We had a feeling that the story of marijuana policy reform is not over yet, so we decided to do a new film about …
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Author: A.J. Herrington / High Times
