This summer, four teenagers set up two folding chairs on a BART station concourse and started asking strangers to sit down. The result was "BART and Soul," an eight-minute documentary about the people who ride BART and the places it takes them.

"BART and Soul" was created by a four-person crew of teen filmmakers: Juno Leto Finney, Lalita Haar, Xia Snyder, and Katie Vong. The film emerged from Camp Reel Stories, a BAVC Media program that gives girls and gender nonconforming youth hands-on filmmaking experience over two weeks each summer. In that time, the crew, wrote, shot, and cut the whole thing, trading roles as they went. They released it under the name Dead Seagulls Studios. It doesn't mean anything (but it made them laugh).

"BART's not just transportation," Lalita said of their decision to center BART in the documentary. "It's a whole community of people that have something in common and can learn something from each other."

That's the thread running throughout the film; on a BART train you're surrounded by strangers, all of whom have a destination in mind and a story to tell.

It wasn't hard to unearth those stories. The filmmakers set up shop and then approached passersby with a sign that read, "Tell us your coolest BART story?" Everyone who wasn't in a rush (save one persnickety person) agreed to an interview, and many offered unexpected responses.

The first person to sit down, for example, shocked the filmmakers when asked his favorite BART story.

"I got to build parts of it," he replied, describing how he watched an airport extension go from a hole in the ground to a working trackway.

The filmmakers at work in 19th St. Oakland Station this summer.

Another interviewee remembered taking BART to a local water park with his mom when he was a young kid. He then recounts the feeling of riding BART with his own son many years later. Another remembers riding BART train after a Warriors championship win, and the way the entire train turned up together. An alternate title for the documentary, the filmmakers said, was "BARTy in the USA."

The work kept going after the cameras stopped rolling. Back home, the crew read up on BART history, skimmed news articles, listened to podcasts, and reflected on their own relationships with the transit system.

Lalita and Juno realized BART is a symbol of independence for teens like them who don't have cars or licenses.

"The biggest benefit of BART especially as a teenager is getting out of the house and having the freedom to travel wherever you want in the Bay," Juno said. "Getting around independently boosts your confidence."

For Katie, visiting for the summer from North Carolina, the film gave her the chance to "experience the Bay Area and what it's all about."

"Riding BART helped me connect with the community here," she said. An unexpected bonus of taking transit instead of driving: gas prices here are way higher than back home, she discovered.

The filmmakers at work at 19th St. Oakland Station this summer.

Xia said the documentary offered her a way to say goodbye to the Bay Area before she and her family moved to Brooklyn at the end of the summer.

"BART is how my friends and I always got around," she said. "So making the documentary was a nice goodbye to the Bay as well as a way to become more in touch with the people who use it."

At the film's premiere, held at the New Parkway Theater in Oakland, the filmmakers said people in the audience cried and, most importantly, laughed.

Xia's grandmother had one of the strongest reactions of all. A week earlier, Xia had bumped into her on the streets of Chinatown, where she regularly takes BART. When Xia asked to interview her for the film, she declined.

But after watching the documentary at the premiere (and tearing up), she told Xia she regretted her decision, lamenting, "I could have been a movie star!"

Judging by the audience's powerful reaction, the filmmakers are confident their documentary achieved its goal.

"When you sit on BART and look around, at first it could look like you're surrounded by strangers," the voiceover at the end says. "However, the beautiful thing our documentary helped us highlight is we're all connected by the relationships and memories we've gained from this transportation system. BART is connection."