The first movie ever made about chess in schools entitled "Knights of the South Bronx" was not really a hit. And that reaction is quite understandable; after all, the vast majority of movie goers are not ardent lovers of the game. Still, for the moving human drama of the story it told, the film was well worth seeing, particularly by school-going children. It wasn't shown in local cinemas, but DR recommended that special viewings should have been arranged for T&T youngsters.
Essentially, "Knights" tells a true story about the transformation which the game of chess wrought in the lives of a class of indisciplined and defiant children attending a school in the New York slum area of South Bronx. Ted Danson takes the starring role of a substitute teacher confronted by this group of young recalcitrants who made it plain from the start that any attempt to educate them would be an exercise in futility. Danson, who spent many of his off hours playing chess in parks of the Bronx, got the bright idea to teach his unruly charges his favourite game and, as the saying goes, the rest was history.
The engrossing magic of chess not only captured the interest of the class but also turned its once obnoxious members into model students who went on to win several high-school tournaments including the state championship and, as their true-life testimonies revealed at the end of the film, they all became productive and respected professionals thanks to the disciplining, mind-enhancing influence of the royal game.
Now another movie, this time an "educational documentary" about chess in schools, is winning strong scholarly support from reputable publications in the US as it is about to be released in film centers across the country. DR believes this movie should also be seen in T&T, particularly by the powers that be, as it again demonstrates the constructive influence that chess can have on school children, in this case those coming from the poorer section of society.
The drama of the documentary, entitled "Brooklyn Castle", takes place at Intermediate School 318, an inner city school in Brooklyn, New York. Describing it last Friday, The Christian Science Monitor observes:?"Despite the fact that more than 65 percent of its students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level, this middle school has consistently trained the most winning junior-high chess teams in the nation." "As inspirational academic stories go, it doesn't get much better than this."
Why is this particular school so good at cultivating teriffic young chess players, the prestigious newspaper asks. It credits the success largely to the principal, assistant principal and head chess teacher, adding that, however, "the film leaves hanging the notion that great chess players are created rather than born." "What is probably true," the paper adds, "is that the innate intelligence of these children, which might have been stifled otherwise, is brought to the fore by chess. It's an intellectual discipline that, as we can see from the kids, is also a life discipline. No wonder they fight so hard to keep the chess programme in tact. They know that there is much more at stake here than moving pieces around on a board."
Alluding to the legends of baseball, Time Magazine describes the "cool kids" of Brooklyn Castle as "the Yankees of chess." The Intermediate 318 chess team has won 26 national titles, more than any other school in the country, an "especially impressive" feat when you consider that more than 70 percent of the school's students live below the poverty line. Time, like other publications, also highlights the financial woes of the chess programme portrayed in the documentary. Midway through the film, the school is hit by budget cuts that threaten to cripple the team's ability to travel to competitions in other states.
Warming to its subject, the famous news magazine observes:?"It would be hard not to fall in love with the five kids profiled in the film which won the audience award at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival. First, there's Rochelle Ballantyne, the player to beat, one of the few girls on the team who is well on her way to becoming the first female African American chess master in the history of chess. And then there's Pobo, the team's backbone, biggest cheerleader and arguably the film's star, who dubs himself "Pobama" and runs for school president, campaigning on a platform that promises to restore money lost in the budget cuts. John Galvin, assistant principal and chess coach, says in the film:?"I teach the kids that for every problem on the chess board, you have to find a solution." Just one of the many life lessons the team learns along the road to the nationals in this touching documentary.
