"Brown Stones To Red Dirt"

It is hard for me to know the full motivations of the creators of this film, though i want to believe that they are taking initiative to instate social change in and outside of the United States, there are some aspects of the film that i feel to be problematic. This film focuses on a group of African American children who reside in the projects of Bed-Stuy, NY and their pen pal relationship with a group of children who reside in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Both groups of children live within the struggles and endure hardships that surround them, for the Bed-Stuy children this includes inner-city poverty, low income housing projects, ever increasing crime levels and extensive amounts of violence in the community. Though this may sound terrible the children of Freetown experience much, much worse including extremely severe poverty, a lack of common resources necessary to survival, such as medicine, nourishment, hydration and shelter. The children in Freetown are accommodated by a makeshift school/orphanage called Children In Crisis, established by a woman named Aunty Musu, who is responsible for saving many of the orphans from death and neglect after an extensive and hostile civil war that left Sierra Leone devastated. The children of Bed-Stuy attend an urban environment primary school that promotes peace and positivity within the community, and through this school initiated the pen pal program that has brought these children together.
This documentary represented and portrayed communities of color exclusively and positively though it was created at the hands of two white males, which to me indicates an imbalance. Though we might begin to see more legitimate representations of communities of color on screen we cannot forget the lack of representation behind the camera in areas of authority.
One thing i really found remarkable about the film was the fact that the young kids in Bed-Stuy were able to look passed the inequality and negativity of their own situation and be selfless enough to conduct a fundraiser in hopes of bettering the education and lives of less fortunate children. The children of Bed-Stuy should be viewed as role models for the rest of the world in that their determination allows them to be potent vessels of social change. One thing that i did not agree with the director on was his belief that keeping the groups of children physically separated would somehow add dramatic effect to the film, though by the end of the film you would think that the children from Sierra Leone and Bed-Stuy had been friends for their entire lives.

Also, this film passed the Bechdel test for both race as well as gender with flying colors.