With two days left of the Tribeca Film Festival, Robert DeNiro's brainchild to attract cultural revenue to post-911 NYC, I'm determined to see as many films as possible within a 48-hour period. One documentary was a must. Zoned-In. Daniella Zanzotto's peek at an inner-city teen's transformation from a drug dealer's son to a Brown University grad. And what made this documentary particularly interesting was Zanzotto followed her subject for 9 years.
Zanzotto initially set out to examine the notoriously edgy Taft High School in the South Bronx and give commentary to our country's failing public school system. But one student stood out. Daniel Nartey. He was smart, street savvy, introspective and a budding radical. Zanzotto found her true subject. And by the time Zanzotto returned to Taft High for a more focused study of Nartey, the young man had been accepted to Brown. Something Zanzotto claimed was uncommon among teens living in such crime-ridden neighborhoods.
What I was hoping to see was the journey of a young man as he explored life beyond the projects, beyond environmental racism and a life of drugs. And for the most part I saw that. Nartey had enough determination to pull his entire community in the South Bronx out of poverty and crime and into the heights of suburban prosperity. But something went wrong in Nartey's journey. And I don't mean in the narrative of his life, but in the documentary itself. Nartey became a complainer. Well at least that's what the filmmaker decided to zoom in on. His initial commentary about his first year at Brown and his alienation was understandable. He can't find any relatable black students. He's even placed on academic probation due to his alleged loneliness. But after the fourth year of his journey and complaints about race and class were still amok, the documentary became frustrating. And by the day of his graduation when he was meandering around the ceremony complaining about being marginalized, I began to get restless. Hey, I don't doubt it's tough at the Ivy Leagues. And I'm certain campus and academic life could be far more satisfying if universities created more programs to help transition "non-traditional" students. I think.
But what Zanzotto doesn't do is give context to Daniel's alienation. She doesn't show Daniel in his classrooms where he claimed both instructor and students were against him. She doesn't interview any of his instructors in order to offer a different point of view about Brown life. She doesn't interview any other students. All we got was one young black Ivy Leaguer from the South Bronx walking through the halls of Brown with a chip on his shoulder. And that wasn't fair.
Now I was very happy Zanzotta introduced her audience to Daniel Nartey. An introspective young man determined to make it against all odds. An intelligent student who managed to graduate from Brown and return to the South Bronx and teach. But there was nothing in between. No obstacles to help us appreciate the outcome of his journey. By the way, he gets married, gets partial custody of his son... but we see none of it.
But there was something Nartey said during his Brown graduation that stayed with me. He said he felt like he was an experiment. That Brown only accepted him as a student to pat themselves on the back and say they were making progress for admitting a poor black kid from the Bronx.
I wondered then if this was the truth to the entire documentary. Why wasn't there any classroom footage? Why wasn't there any interviews from instructors or mentors? During his AfAm Studies commencement Nartey collapsed into his Chairman's arms and cried. And there appeared to be a bond between the two. That was a shock considering we never saw him interact with anyone, and he certainly never mentioned any positive experiences with faculty or peer.
I'm not trying to throw salt at the filmmaker. I'm simply saying she may have done herself a disservice by leaving out all the footage that would actually humanize Nartey. You know, pro and con the young brother. Show him as a full-fledged human being trying to navigate through academic life as opposed to a mouth piece against Ivy education and privilege.
