Ellie Walton, documentary filmmaker and D.C. native, turns a wide lens on her city

In 2001, when she returned to the District after attending film school in Scotland and London — a detour she took to explore her roots — she saw her city changing. She remembers Columbia Heights as the epicenter.

City in the throes of change

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A trailer for 'Walk With Me.'

“There was tension in the air. Every corner was a construction site. Everybody looking around, like, ‘Who’s moving next?’ ” Walton remembers thinking, “Who’s documenting this?”

She learned that her friend from the local political arts group Spoken Resistance, whom she had performed with during summer breaks from college, had written a one-woman play. Anu Yadav’s “Capers” told the stories of residents of the Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg public housing complex, which the federal government planned to convert into mixed-income housing.

After meeting Capper residents Rose Oliphant and Debra Frazier, Walton and co-producer Sam Wild were eager to film the residents’ struggle to remain in their homes. The film “Chocolate City” debuted in 2008 and has become a teaching tool at universities and beyond.

But, Walton says, there’s no instant gratification for her work. “It’s not a quick fix,” she says. “It’s not like all of a sudden you hand people a microphone and they get their stories out and everything’s better. . . . Sometimes you don’t even know the effect you’re gonna have on people. Sometimes they don’t know. ’’

Oliphant, one of the few residents of the housing complex who made it into the new development, says she knows.

“If it weren’t for Ellie doing ‘Chocolate City’ and Anu doing the play, we would have never been on the map,” she says. Walton turned Oliphant’s six-year struggle to meet the government’s requirements to return to the site into a short film called “Struggling to Get Back.” By the end, Oliphant had become a community activist.

Four years after “Chocolate City’s” release, Walton and her mother seem part of Oliphant’s family.

“I never had a Caucasian for a friend,” says Oliphant, who is African American. “But after I got to know her, she was just like us. So down to earth. Just a different color.”

The cameras keep rolling

It’s graduation day for the last cohort of trainees of the D.C. Green Corps, and they’ve filled the black folding chairs in the canary-yellow ballroom of the Josephine Butler Parks Center across from Meridian Hill Park. Graduates watch a 10-minute film of their work from the past 12 weeks. As they recognize themselves, there’s some blushing, but mostly there’s laughter. Walton gets it all on film.

Trainees wave to their fans in the crowd as they’re awarded certificates.

For Samuels, who’s seated in the last row facing east, the moment is bittersweet. He’s acquired some great skills in urban and community forestry but doesn’t have a full-time job. His paycheck ended with the program April 10, and he has a daughter to take care of.

After the ceremony, he’ll hit some spots on U Street and relax a little. The next day, he’ll sleep in, but just a little past 6 a.m. because he must continue his job hunt, perhaps in the computer room of a library. Maybe he’ll have the chance to use the interviewing skills he picked up while filming. If he’s really lucky, maybe he’ll find a business in Anacostia that hires people from the neighborhood, just like the one he found in Deanwood.

“We believe in Michael,” Walton says.

Her crew’s not packing up and going home. The program is over, but it’ll keep filming him as he tells his story of looking for work in this city.