>>REVIEW
BOYS OF BARAKA
Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Loki Films, 2006
Just over 10 years ago, The Baraka School became one of the more interesting (and successful) experiments in the history of Baltimore education. Culling its students from the most disruptive five per cent of the male middle school population, fewer than a dozen boys a year were taken to Kenya to attend a remote boarding school devoted to changing their attitudes to learning. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady spent two years following one of the Baraka classes, and four preteen boys in particular.
The film opens with chillingly intercut shots of police cars roaming the night streets, and the boys we are to become acquainted with playing a graphic, painful and explicit game of "cops and robbers," gleefully mimicking what the statistics say will be the future of almost all of them. And we are introduced to the boys – Devon, whose mother is a drug addict in and out of rehab and jail, and who wants to become a preacher; Richard, who is "strong like Frederick Douglass" and sees a future for himself beyond the dealers on his street corner; Montrey, who has been suspended eight times this year, but dreams of getting his BA, his Masters, his PhD, and becoming a chemical scientist and Romesh, Richard’s younger brother, who exudes quiet and shy gentleness.
As the boys embark on the unimaginable path of moving to Africa for two years, Ewing and Grady follow them with a butterfly-light touch, recording their struggles and those of their families, their homesickness, their ever-present anger and their many triumphs.
The documentary is short on details, eschewing descriptions of the history of Baraka (which means "blessing" in Kiswahili) for straightforward filming of people in the act of living their lives. Boys of Baraka grips you by the throat in its first moments, and never lets go. Ewing and Grady refuse to anticipate the outcome – they simply sit quietly and observe as the boys leap from the screen, flourishing into powerful young men under the slightest touch of educational care, and fighting their personal demons every step of the way. Special features include a filmmaker’s commentary and an interview with Bill Cosby. |
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