The goal of The Harlem Movie Project is to teach and inspire a group of teenagers to make a feature-length movie about their own lives, and the daily issues they face. Through a series of workshops about screenwriting, acting, and directing, the teens will learn numerous skills that will not only help them realize their creative visions for this film, but will also give them in-depth media skills for later in life. Ultimately, the aim of this project is for us to teach the teens what we know as filmmakers, so that the teens will have the tools to teach us who they are as people.
We have hired a small, professional film crew to work alongside the teens, to help them create a film that is emotionally and creatively theirs, but also has a professional look and feel. Production will last through the first half of 2007, and the film will be submitted to major film festivals in fall 2007.
LIFE ON SCREEN
The storyline of the movie sews together the real experiences of the cast members, with a fictional narrative about a teenager who leaves his/her neighborhood to attend a top boarding school, only to face a surprising twist on racism, and have to find the inner strength to persevere.
The first half of the movie will be conceived by the kids in this project themselves –the storyline will be based on their writings, their life experiences, and their own creative impulses. What we aim to have –in terms of the narrative—is a day-in-the-life portrait of the three stars of the movie, their friendship, their families, and their schools. Essentially, the actors will be playing versions of their true-life selves. The narrative should address issues of the kids’ hopes and dreams, the impact of their neighborhood on their lives, and what it means for them to belong –or be excluded from –certain racial and socioeconomic groups.
The second half of the movie takes off when on of the kids is recruited to attend a top boarding school in the hopes of achieving a brighter future. However, once on campus, surrounded by new types of people, and feeling far away from home, our hero feels like an outsider. He finds an unexpected way into the school’s social life when then other students find our hero’s Harlem background to be new and “exotic.” The other students expect our hero to act in a ‘ghetto” fashion and, in order to fit it, he does so—even to the point of supplying drugs to the other students, who assume that he must have drug connections. Ironically, our hero is a good kid who has no drug connections, and has to employ his friends back home to find some drugs. Soon, life seems to be going great for our hero—he’s popular, he’s making money from selling drugs, and he falls in love with a prep school girl.
Eventually, though, our hero is caught by the school for dealing drugs, and expelled. Traumatized by possibly losing his chance at a bright future, he hangs on to the last vestiges of this wealthy world by hiding away in his girlfriend’s dorm room. But this can only last for a few days before he’s forced by the school to return home. Back in his neighborhood, he is shunned by many old friends who perceive him as having “sold out” by trying to leave the neighborhood. Caught between two worlds—and accepted by neither of them—our hero has to negotiate the fine line between trying to belong to one community or another (which is especially difficult when those communities seem to be at odds), versus finding his own inner strength. He finally comes to terms with how to balance the pressures of others, while remaining true to himself.
