Community Event, Featured Voices, Siskiyou

“The Golden Ghosts,” filmmaker Mark Oliver’s Project Filmed in Siskiyou Follows Two African Americans Who Arrived in California Around 1852

GOLDEN GHOSTS TRAILER

By Mark Oliver
Artist -Author – Filmmaker

The Golden Ghosts is a 60-minute historically based fiction film that explores the lesser-known histories of African Americans and others during the Gold Rush in Northern California filmed primarily in Siskiyou County. The two main film stars are Victor Martin and Fred Magee and also locals Carla Charraga, Ruben Alvarado and Allison Scull.

I have a deep connection with Northern California and Siskiyou County. My great-grandparents settled here as Italian immigrants around 1900 in the town of Weed. My mother’s parents left in WW2 to work in the shipyards of Richmond, Ca so I grew up in the Bay Area. We spent summers and took multiple trips to Siskiyou County every year. My family moved back 40 years ago, and I moved here permanently in 2005.

Since filming my first documentary in 2006, I’ve collaborated with various communities, including the Karuk and Winnemem Wintu tribes, veterans, ecologists, historians, and African American communities in Shasta and Siskiyou Counties. I remember doing an interview in Callahan for my first film learning about the thousands of French immigrants living in French Gulch and the Portuguese, the Germans, there is so much to unpack about the gold rush period. I’m passionate about these stories because understanding our history is crucial to being good citizens. I hope that people who see this film will learn something new and be changed somehow.

While preparing at the COS library for my 2010 documentary about Weed and McCloud, From the Quarters to Lincoln Heights I came across census data that recorded African Americans in the Siskiyou Mountains during the historic gold rush period; the more I studied, the rarer this census data became—nobody I encountered had ever heard of it. Eventually, I found maps of mining sites that documented African American presence, with names like: Negro Boy Mine, Negro Creek, and more.

L-R Kelcy Swanstrum on Sound, Jeanny Wang actress,Todd Wilson Camera

In 2018 My first iteration of The Golden Ghosts turned this information into a community theater project. I mentored local African American community members in short plays where we revealed these untold stories of Black miners who had made their way into the remote parts of California. After five years of our troupe performing all around the north state and the publishing of a book I felt I had enough research and context to write a script and tell a grander story of African American, Mexican, Chinese, and Native Americans who participated in the Gold Rush in what was then and still is the remote Siskiyou Mountains.

The Golden Ghosts film follows two African American miners as they traverse the terrain on their mission to find gold and improve their lives. During their journey, they meet other people who represent some of the untold history of our region. I wanted to unpack the stories of Black miners, Indigenous people, and others who are barely talked about when one studies the California history of the gold rush. My film is just the tip of the iceberg in portraying the many multicultural relationships during that time. And I’m not just looking at the Gold Rush, per se; I’m also interested in the shared love of wild landscapes especially which we have here in Siskiyou County. The film also has a touch of Magical Realism. I often think it is crazy how we walk and hike in these landscapes where hundreds of people once worked and lived and now you wouldn’t see a trace of them, but maybe their ghosts.

Come see this new film about Siskiyou County Gold Rush History Yreka Feb 23rd, doors open at 6:30 Preservation hall


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