Caron Creighton was working as a journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle when she first encountered the Wood Street encampment in Oakland, once Northern California's largest homeless settlement. When residents received an eviction notice in 2022, she quit her job and started filming. The result is "Wood Street," a 100-minute documentary that has now screened at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia after selling out three local screenings in Oakland and the Bay Area (Deadline).

The film centres on John Janosko and LaMonté Ford, two long-term Wood Street residents who helped organise their neighbours during a legal battle with the City of Oakland. In 2022, residents and the city settled a lawsuit, with Oakland agreeing to change how it approaches encampment closures and to pay $250,000 (Oaklandside). A federal court order that August had cleared the way for Caltrans to sweep the site, where an estimated 200 to 300 people were living (City of Oakland).

The encampment was demolished in 2023, displacing roughly 300 residents. Many moved into a tiny-home site that the City of Oakland later also evicted (KQED).

Creighton shot about 95% of the film herself, using a Canon C70 camera with a shotgun microphone and a lav mic clipped to her subjects. She is a BAVC Media 2024 MediaMaker Fellow (BAVC Media), and is described as an award-winning Bay Area journalist and filmmaker (The Pulp). "Wood Street" had its Bay Area premiere at the 25th San Francisco Documentary Festival before heading to BlackStar, and will continue on the regional festival circuit.

The official Seed & Spark page for the project describes John and LaMonté as "two unhoused men turned community leaders" who organised neighbours in the face of displacement, addiction, and homelessness (Seed & Spark). The BlackStar film guide lists the project as a Feature Documentary from the United States, running 100 minutes (BlackStar).

What gives "Wood Street" its pull is the access. Creighton was there before the cameras became a fixture of the story, and her subjects are not case studies but people the viewer comes to know by name. Three sold-out local screenings suggest the film has already found the audience that lived through the events it records — the festival run will test whether that reach extends further.