Pahokee

An amazing portrayal of life in high school that pulls at your heartstrings while providing an intimately filmed view of life in rural America

This film does a wonderful job of allowing its subjects to tell their own stories in an honest and unflinching way, depicting the humanity and struggles of a marginalized community in a way that builds compassion and understanding.

"Pahokee" is a moving and inspiring story of four African-American and Hispanic students, as they ride the roller coaster of their senior year in high school, in a rural farming community. From football games, student council elections, parades and proms, to single parenthood, after school jobs, college acceptance letters and graduation speeches, Pahokee and her protagonists will have you laughing, crying and cheering for them to succeed. This is a documentary with heart and soul!

"The only film in competition from Sundance that doesn't have US distribution." -Patrick Bresnan (director)

When it comes to capturing moments in the daily lives of select people in a community during a key period of their teenage years, this is a great fly on the wall documentary. It shows a reasonably well-rounded view of lower-/working-class Afro and Latinx rural America. A view that one would find difficult to discover on the news.

Pahokee was interesting, racially relevant, and somewhat nostalgic. Kinda had me wanting to move to back to an Afro-American community/city.

(significantly easier to read on my blog)

Notable Things:

1) The contrast of student lives in school and adult lives in fields

2) Fashion photoshoot day

3) The drum off

4) How well the football games were presented, especially since I lack interest in the sport

5) Going from school to cheerleading to working at a "fried chicken store" on the same day

6) The consequences of having "hard working" parents

7) The Harvard recruiter

8) The Army recruiter

Side Notes:

There are two back-to-back moments during prom night that had me wondering if there was any tension between the two racial groups.

While this is the directors' debut film, they've made three short films about Pahokee.

This is a surprisingly difficult documentary to find a representative photo for. If you search for one, you'll primarily see Afro-Americans, Latinx-Americans, football, cheerleading, prom, and fashion, but nothing that I feel accurately represents it or the four main people as a group (like a photo of them all together). It just gets into too much for me to feel okay with limiting it to any of those one topics. Fortunately, the website had a photo that encompassed both racial groups and the city's youth celebrating what I assume to be Día de Muertos (Day of the Living).

The more I follow the film's Facebook page, the more I feel like this film is special. After I saw Pahokee at the 42nd Denver Film Festival in early November, it traveled to Brazil, Poland, New York City, Germany, France, Austin, Key West, Portugal, and China.

Statement: If you're the type of person to meet someone from the lower-/working-class who is Afro-/Latinx-American and immediately assume stereotypes about them, do yourself and society a favor by watching this documentary.

Minor Spoiler: The decision to capture the person keeping an eye out with a revolver alongside (who I assume to be) his peers squatting behind cars to avoid potential bullets and then dash over to the two mothers holding down three or four kids while someone repeatedly yells out "get down!", lay with them, and keep the camera focused on their shocked faces was just... excellent. Keep that camera person out of a warzone. Or don't. Might turn out to be another Marie Colvin from A Private War (2018).

About the Trailer:

Nevermind dat sweet transition 2/3rds through, it only starts kicking in the slight spoilers (à la ruining dem moments) at 01:16, so it's fairly safe to watch.

Disclosure:

I attended the director Q&A during the 42nd Denver Film Festival immediately after watching the documentary.

This documentary gripped us from the very start. Good photography and editing in a film of a small town on the edge of the Everglades. This film follows the community and 4 senior High School students in their quest to move on to a better life with the support of their families and peers. Football is the ticket out for many of the young men, who have a disproportionate number of players in the NFL.