BoysOfBaraka Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In case you aren't aware, Michael Moore has his own film festival up in Michigan, where he showcases hand-picked films that he loves, as an alternative to the "assembly line" movies made in Hollywood. This year's festival begins next week, but without one of the films that Moore had planned on screening. Magnolia Pictures has pulled Jesus Camp so that the documentary will not be tainted by being associated with Moore. See, the distributor is hoping to market the film, which was directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, to Evangelical Pentecostals as well as to liberal documentary fans. And obviously those Pentecostals aren't going to see a movie they know has Moore's seal of approval stamped on it, right?

"I have no problem with Michael Moore," Magnolia president Eamonn Bowles told indieWIRE, "its[sic] just that (he) is such a polarizing figure and I don't want to turn off a certain segment of the audience that is going to like the film and find it interesting." Supposedly the documentary is completely unbiased in its approach to its subject of an evangelical summer camp, and it would make no sense to have people thinking Ewing and Grady are anything like the partisan director of Fahrenheit 9/11. Bowles also mentioned that his decision was made so people can "make up their own minds." Why he can't trust the Pentecostals to do so if the film shows at Moore's Traverse City Film Festival is beyond me. But I hope for Bowles sake that none of them read indieWIRE. ...

[via Hollywood Wiretap]

What would happen if you took a group of middle-school boys from a tough, inner-city school district in Baltimore, and transplanted them to a boarding school in Kenya, in the middle of nowhere? That’s the question the Baraka program asked, and for seven years the program, funded by a private foundation, picked a group of boys from Baltimore public schools each year to enroll in the Baraka school. The boys accepted would get two years of free tuition, room and board in Kenya, in an environment where they had one-on-one attention from teachers for the first time in their young lives.

Filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing spent over three years chronicling the experience of four such boys: Devon, Montrey, and brothers Richard and Romesh - boys they came to think of as The Boys of Baraka. When I spoke with Rachel Grady on the phone for this interview, the thing that struck me most was the passion with which she spoke of these boys she set out to film, and ultimately befriended. The insight Grady has gained from working with the boys and their families, she says, has forever changed her perspective on life in our society, especially for poor kids growing up in the inner city.

(interview below the fold)