Belltown Messenger

Greetings, friends. This month's column might well be subtitled "And a little child shall lead them," as the films in question are both documentaries dealing with kids. Both films also recently played the Seattle International Film Festival, and are now in general circulation. Rock School focuses on one (school) year in the life of The Paul Green School of Rock Music in Philadelphia. Kids from 9 to 17 can attend, and the film starts off by showing them in action; sure, there's the novelty factor of seeing a passel of young'uns playing metal, but your jaw is sure to drop as you watch pint-sized prodigy CJ coolly handling the guitar lead of Santana's "Black Magic Woman" (especially when you realize the kid's only 12 freakin' years old!).
As is typical in these kinds of docs, the filmmakers focus on a few types of kid in the interest of painting a well-rounded view of their subject. Along with CJ, we meet the terminally depressive Will; the fresh-faced Madi (who starts out with a penchant for Sheryl Crow); and twins Asa and Tucker, who may or may not have talent, but who most definitely do have the requisite stage mother.
Yet what really adds color to this film is the man who lords over them all, Paul Green himself. Indeed, the doc might be fairly run-of-the-mill if it wasn't for Green and his unorthodox methods of teaching, which run the gamut from no-holds-barred enthusiasm to what some might call outright cruelty. Green feels no compunction about berating his students, preferably at the highest volume possible, later engaging in all kinds of rationalizing to explain it away. He sometimes gets in trouble; an offhand comment about Will's presumed suicidal tendencies landed him in hot water with Will's mother, for instance. And even Green concedes there might be an element of jealousy in his behavior; when his own band failed to take off, he started the school, thus enabling him to remain involved with music in some way. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who teach, shriek?
Still, Green's tough love does enable his crew to acquit themselves with ease when they play a Frank Zappa music festival in Germany (former Zappa musician Napoleon Murphy-Brock even leads the audience in a series of "We're not worthy!" bows). Above all, Rock School does show how you can keep rock's primal spirit alive, even in the ostensible formal setting of a school. Mad Hot Ballroom is good deal more genteel. The kids in this film are 5th grade students in NYC whose academic curriculum includes ballroom dancing. Yes, in 10 weeks these kids go from barely being able to stand holding hands with a member of the opposite sex to executing flawless versions of the merengue, the rumba, the tango, the foxtrot, and swing dancing. How many of you can say the same?
To make it more interesting for their charges, the classes culminate in city wide dance competitions, and so we look at the various schools in different stages of preparation for the event. This being New York, it's not hard to find diversity; the school where a shocking 97% of families live at or below the poverty level, the rich kids school where they take their prosperity for granted, the hip school in the middle of Tribeca.
The kids are all great, blurting out whatever they think, whenever they think it, with that unabashed confidence kids have before learning to excel in the art of self-censorship. It's also interesting watching them gradually get caught up in their new "sport," starting out with some disdain (especially in the case of the boys), then developing such a fierce zeal to win some of them actually cry when they lose.
And they aren't the only ones. As in Rock School, the teachers add another dimension to the story. Allison (at PS 150, Tribeca) tears up just thinking about her kids; Yomaira (PS 115, Washington Heights) has a determination to give her kids as much as possible on a limited budget; dance instructor Alex, born in Russia, has a graceful manner and posture to die for. The adults make the point that kids get more out of the classes than a few new dance steps; the praise they receive and the chance they have to succeed at something can actually help turn their lives around.
But mainly, this film is just a lot of fun, and I had a huge smile on my face while watching it all the way through. Again, there's something of the novelty factor of watching kids do "adult" things, but eventually it becomes more than that; you're also watching these kids come into their own as individuals. Something that makes both these films a pleasure.

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