Education in "the Ghetto"

The camera zooms in, focusing on an aging apartment building, shabby and slowly falling apart. Moving in on one particular window and beyond, the camera rests on the visage of a young African American, slumbering peacefully.

His eyelids flutter unexpectedly, open, and then blink away a night of rest. He rises from the bed, turns on the stereo, and washes his face – but what’s this? No sound, not even a hint of static. Is there a problem with the soundtrack? There is the sudden realization that the young man is deaf.

Sound like an opening scene from some Hollywood movie?

Wrong. This is the introduction to a short clip called, “Can You Hear?” directed by Jonathan Rodriguez, a student at The Ghetto Film School.

Located in the South Bronx, an area renowned for its poverty and high crime rate, the Ghetto Film School focuses on “assets-based development.” President Joe Hall told the New York Times Thursday that students were admitted to this school based on enthusiasm and aptitude, not economic need. The school encourages impoverished students from a background of delinquency to pursue a future that involves college.

In an interview with Joe Hall, Saul Austerlitz of MM (MovieMaker Magazine) discovers that the school trains people in three different ways: through a high school, summer fellows program, and Digital Bodega, a student-run business. Each of these ways serves to steer young adults towards achieving their goal, whether it is to become a sound designer, director, or filmmaker. What is most commendable about this project, however, is that they approach students with the aim of taking whatever talent they have and using it to its fullest extent. The program serves only as a resource; they do not view their students as “potential problems to solve,” as most other programs are doing.

Student Destimona Anokye, who appeared on Eyewitness News on September 4, says that her goal is to do all kinds of stories. She supports the statement of the program, saying that it gives her confidence by equipping her with every skill needed for filmmaking.

The most important aspect about this program is that it is furthering the development of other institutions like it. Students are seeing more windows of opportunity, and we may soon be viewing the products of new talents from the Bronx.

Ghetto Film already works with a local city school, the New Explorer’s High School for Film and Humanities, and Hall’s hope is that the construction of a new cinema high school should soon be under way. It would function with a core curriculum of academic subjects, as well as with electives such as screenwriting, film history, and production.

However, this is only of the Department of Education relents. The main reason that they may oppose is that a specialized high school is not what the city needs most at the moment.

The principle behind Ghetto Film is still quite admirable. “When you form a relationship with young people, using an assets-based approach, you get a lot more done in a much quicker amount of time,” says Hall.

And thus, new opportunity is revealed to those most in need.