NOLA PICTURES
One third of Bronx residents live in poverty. Some estimates predict less than 40 percent of Bronx students will graduate from high school. Arts programs have been slashed. Amidst this challenging environment is DreamYard, a program “committed to helping transform Bronx schools and communities through the power of innovative, project based arts education … [and] to challenging the cyclical systems of inequality and poverty by empowering youth to discover and develop their best possible selves … .” To help raise funds for DreamYard, Nola Pictures created a film that informs donors about the organization’s mission, programs, participants and success. “The founders of DreamYard really understand how kids learn,” says Rick Knief of Nola Pictures, “and that every kid learns differently. They brought art not just into art class, but into academic classes by turning a fractional problem into an art problem, turning history into a play and trying to find ways to get kids to connect.”

In preparation for filming, Knief interviewed DreamYard’s founders and organized two days of interviews with kids and teachers. Things didn’t go exactly according to plan. “These two 15-year-old girls wrote a poem that depicted what their lives were like, and when they read it, everyone on the crew sat there slack-jawed. It was a profound moment that completely blew us away.” Knief immediately saw the “spine” of the entire film and brought the girls into different settings around the Bronx where they read parts of the poem while he filmed. Their confident voices and the powerful rhythms and imagery of their words pop up like a call and response to the rest of the stories in the film. “The poem really captures the essence of what they’re trying to do with DreamYard,” Knief notes. “As a documentary filmmaker, you have to be flexible and can’t be too focused. It’s more like a painting, and you’re always forming it, working it. When they read that poem, I knew that was the emotional link between the children and the people at the fundraising dinner or logging onto the website.”

Of course, working with children under any circumstances demands flexibility. Knief notes that having two boys of his own helped him relate to the kids and get them to “pretend he’s not there” as a filmmaker. “I just try to create a mood on the set that’s lively and fun,” he explains. And this is perhaps the most powerful part of the film he created for DreamYard. Despite the poverty, the odds, the rough, urban setting, the film is filled with the joy of young people deeply immersed in the pleasures of discovering their own ideas, unlocking their own creativity, finding the bright spots in their own minds. “Whenever I approach any project,” Knief says, “I try to get to the human truth. In this film, it was depicting the ways that these kids are learning and thriving and enjoying school.” Laurel Saville

NOLA PICTURES | DIRECTOR: RICK KNIEF | EDITOR: ANTOINE MILLS (OHIO EDIT) | AGENCY: OGILVY | CD ART: CAROL DRONSFI ELD | CD COPY: ERIC ARONIN PRODUCER: DANA MAY | CLIENT: THE DREAMYARD PROJECT | WWW.NOLAPICTURES.COM