Felicia is a 1965 short film (12 minutes) directed by three UCLA students: Bob Dickson, Alan Gorg, and Trevor Greenwood.
It is a documentary short concentrating on the life of Felicia Bragg, a black teenaged girl living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Felicia, a very perceptive young woman, talks about the difficulties of life in Watts, noting how the predominantly white sections of the city are much nicer, with open spaces. She tells the camera about her family: grandmother, single mother who supports the household by sewing dresses, older brother, younger sister. Felicia goes on to talk about the problems besetting Watts and how she believes the solution is to build Watts up rather than leave.
Filmed only a few months before the Watts riots tore the neighborhood apart. Compare the fictional feature film Killer of Sheep, set in Watts a decade later. In Real Life Felicia Bragg did go to college at UC-Santa Barbara and later worked for politicians such as Tom Bradley and Maxine Waters.
Tropes:
- Character Narrator: Felicia Bragg talking about her own life.
- Disappeared Dad: No mention made of Felicia's father.
- Documentary: Featuring a teenaged girl with an acute sense of how the world works.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Ends with Felicia walking away down the railroad tracks.
- The One Who Made It Out: Discussed Trope and Defied Trope, as Felicia talks about how she wants to stay in Watts and help build it up, rather than get out.
- Slice of Life: A teenager struggling to make something of herself in Watts.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Opens with Felicia talking about how white high schools are in much nicer, more open neighborhoods, and they have swimming pools. Then the metaphor is pounded home with an actual shot of train tracks. Later Felicia talks with irritation about the huge piles of derelict cars in junk yards which directly abut Watts neighborhoods.
