Speakers Forum presents local, landmark documentary, Motel Drive
December 1, 2025, 6:30 pm, OAB Auditorium
The Fresno City College Speakers Forum presents the landmark documentary "Motel Drive." The film features FCC student Justin Shaw and his family over a seven-year period within a community of motels located in Fresno, that are infamous for illicit activity. The documentary follows the Shaw family as they grapple with housing insecurity and addiction while trying to raise their young son.
Located along a sun-bleached stretch of Fresno, "Motel Drive" is a row of historic motels that have seen better days. Originally a regional hub for performers on the circuit, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and the Rolling Stones played here. Then the 99 freeway bypassed the strip, triggering a rapid decline.
Today, the motels are home to sex workers, veterans, and more than 130 families. It's all ground zero for a city eager to tackle its overlapping crises of addiction, poverty and affordable housing, and finally shed its reputation as 'the meth capital of America.'
Enter the largest infrastructure project in the U.S. history: the California High-Speed Rail, which breaks ground directly on Motel Drive. Over the next 7 years, this cinema vérité documentary observes the rippling impacts of this giant public project through the lens of one family, the Shaws, as they strive for the most basic of comforts — a stable home."
After the film, a discussion and Q&A with Director Brendan Geraghty, Justin and his father Jason Shaw will follow.
Brendan Geraghty is a producer and director with over ten years of experience in TV, with specific expertise in the innovative docuseries/alternative comedy space at Abso Lutely Productions. Most notably, Brendan has worked as a producer on the critically acclaimed and Emmy nominated Comedy Central docuseries Nathan for You. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer, where he was trained in cross-cultural communication and community development, living and working in West Africa. It is this unique background that has strongly positioned him to work in dynamic, logistically challenging environments.
