A film part of the Canadian Spectrum Program is Listen to This. I had the pleasure of chatting with Juan Baquero about the film; set to premiere at Hot Docs this Sunday, May 2nd. This “is a documentary about Evolving through the Arts, a songwriting workshop for inner city kids in Toronto’s Jane-Finch community. The film focuses on the musicians who teach the program and three of the students who took part.” This is one of the films that has been creating some buzz in the city. When I asked Baquero about the attention the film is getting, he said it’s been “a surprise; a pleasant surprise. It is creating some buzz because it’s a Toronto story and it is also successful at capturing the process of children discovering themselves in a music program.”
I had read somewhere that Baquero moved to Canada, from Colombia, about four years ago. He’d been working in television programming and making documentaries for a number of years. However, reality can at times be really overwhelming in Colombia with violence in the news 24-7. Somehow, the public grew an appetite for the extreme. “My comfort level is in the middle,” said Baquero. He is not one to thrive on politics but he certainly pays attention to stories that may not always “merit a headline. Every situation in life is a story waiting to be told, as long as someone pays attention.” This is where this project comes in.
People in the Jane-Finch area are generally distrustful of the media because most stories about the neighbourhood are negative, which reminds Baquero of the situation in Colombia. However, reality is much richer than these negative stories we are exposed to. When the opportunity came up to follow the kids from Firgrove Public School partake in this music program, he was there 100%. Baquero had had a chance to meet some of the kids about a year before starting to film this documentary. He had volunteered to lead a video workshop over the summer of 2008. In this setting, he realised that working with kids requires a lot of work in order to make them feel comfortable with the camera. It actually took a while for the kids to warm up to him because they needed to assess if he was “cool.” The workshop helped gain their trust, which in turn made the filming of the documentary much easier.
Prior to filming the workshop Baquero, of course, was in constant dialogue with the school’s principal, vice-principal and teachers. Things were a little easier to present when funding came in for a short-film to document this music program as a pilot project in October 2008. The short-film was based on the same program Thompson Egbo-Egbo offered at a school in Regent Park. The short showed a lot of potential which made it possible to make this full-length with funding from TVO.
When it comes to documentaries, I am often curious about how much time a project takes to complete from the moment of its inception until the finish product. Baquero described that it took him a great deal of time; “it was a long journey.” The process of researching was long. Filming was grueling, especially when he began with just one camera by himself but overall, it was fun. He was in the community pretty much all day, everyday. Many of the parents and children have busy lives and he had to make himself available when they were ready to film outside of the music program. The result includes some very personal scenes with the children and their parents. The filming aspect got to be quite hectic that Baquero; there were some “moments of panic” in terms of timing, what was on film and having only person doing most of the work. Eventually, he spoke with the producer, Howard Fraiberg, to pose the idea of giving the kids cameras so they could record video diaries. In the end, these are some of the funniest and most intimate parts of the film, as the children reveal more of themselves and their potential.
After seven months of editing about 300-400 hours of shooting, we get to see an inspiring, motivating film. We see a different perspective of an area of our city that is often plagued by negative stigma. It is also a nice account of three great kids hoping to do the things they love as they grow up. The hope for the film is that it will make the festival circuit and see what happens. There may be a possibility for it to have DVD distribution as an educational source; TVO and BRAVO! are in dialogue about this. The idea from Egbo-Egbo’s foundation is to offer this program to various schools in Toronto; to give as many children as possible a similar opportunity.
The response from Firgrove’s Pricipal and VP have been positive as well as from others who’ve seen the film. With this stamp of approval, the film is set to premiere tomorrow, May 2nd, with the director, instructors, school staff and children in attendance. If you cannot make this showing, there is a second chance on May 9th. Go to to hotdocs.ca for more info on this film and others.
Coming soon! My interview with @lenorezann abo
