Poster Image used with permission
©2006 Loki Films
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Film: The Boys of Baraka [NR] 84 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $11.00
Where Viewed: Starz FilmCenter, Denver, CO
When 1st Seen: 4 May 2006
Time: 5:30 p.m.
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DVD |
Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady took over three years to chronicle the lives of the boys of Baraka in their NAACP Image Award 2006-winning Best Independent/Foreign Film, The Boys of Baraka. According to their directors’ statement, “We had both made films about the disenfranchised; people living on the margins of society.” Therefore, how fitting that these two should focus their lens on a patch of USA society that few USAers want to acknowledge even exists—the thousands and thousands of children living in the USA in unconscionable levels of trans-generational poverty. I find it utterly impossible to comprehend a nation of such wealth and prosperity that institutionalizes poverty in useless social service organizations designed not to empower the poor, but to imprison them in long-term government dependence. This is, quite simply, 180-degrees contrary to what I feel most people, world-wide, would believe the USA stands for. And to think of the percentages of children that grow up living below the poverty line and the odds that continuously build against them, is very painful indeed. Therefore, how exciting to think there are people who actually are working to try to make a difference—in this case a group of people who founded an experimental boarding school in Kenya to take 12-13 year-old black males from the USA and motivate them to lives of purpose. For the film, Ewing and Grady decided to focus on just a few of the kids entering this strange new world: Devon Brady as Himself, Darius Chambers as himself, Richard Keyser as Himself, Montrey Moore as himself, and Romesh Vance also as himself. We start by getting to observe each in his home with his relatives. After this, the boys board a jet liner bound for Kenaya and arrive at their Kenyan destination. The school, as it turns out, is run like a tight ship with no fighting and lots of hard study. The program is designed to help them build the tools to demonstrate their successes and find their inner gifts. The culture shock is as compelling as it their new-found distance from the influences of their previous neighborhoods from which their guardians hope they may escape forever. The boys must confront their own insecurities about being away from home as much as they must navigate the new social structures of the boarding school culture. It is fascinating to watch them learn their way around this new and dynamic environment. Likewise, I found myself nearly enchanted to witness them overcome their fears and open up to this new setting that was, after all, conceived to help them discover themselves. Now, this is not to say there are not some gut wrenching scenes—especially scenes of the families back home sending video messages to the kids in Kenya. In one, a grandmother chooses not to mention to the kid that his mother is now in prison because she worries that he would not be able to handle it alone, by himself, in a foreign land. This was an instrumental and poignant part of the film.
The film definitely has little bit of an unfinished flavor to it. Naturally, I’d like to know what happened to the school, the instructors, and the kids themselves, of course. Does the program still exist, and has any data been done to compare this school’s program to others, perhaps less costly, programs. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed the film very much, and I was thrilled to find people who are working so hard to try and make a difference. Kudos for the directors for making this film happen.
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The Boys Of Baraka [DVD] (2005) DVD
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