IT
COULD have been down-town Harlem or even the Brazil Carnival, but
it wasn't. The opening shots of urban decay and the smiling faces
that live among it took us nearer home to Chapeltown, Leeds, in
"City" (BBC-2), the first of six programmes on life in
our towns.
"Paradise Lost" producer Gerry Troyna's
close look at "Chap" was not the usual warts and all probe
into the red light and twilight zones. Instead we saw the Tiger
Bay of Leeds through the eyes of its youngest residents, the pupils
of Harehills Middle School and in particular Orlando Weeks.
Ironically or appropriately, if you prefer, the
school dance group was staging "Paradise Lost" right there
in what many would regard as environmental hell on earth.
As dedicated teacher Nadine Senior spoke of the
fallen angels descending to the Inferno, Keith Massey's camera,
hungry for imagery, shot to the tangles of barbed wire, the racked
and broken windows, the pile of rubble that are facts |
of
life anywhere off Chapeltown Road.
But somehow the programme's message via the
School and Milton by way of John Travolta, got tangled along the
way. Were we to take it that because they lived in a rundown part
of town, many from disadvantaged families, that the kids were all
no-hopers? Or could it be that their enthusiasm for school fired
by their teacher would help them rise above their background?
Orlando, who played the lead in the school's pulsating
production spoke of joining the Navy or the R.A.F. but doubted if
he could get enough "O" levels. His parents wanted him
to be a doctor or lawyer. From his small face, full of enthusiasm
and hope, the camera cut to his brother Desmond (18) and out of
work, whiling away his days with the resigned defeat of the long
standing unemployed.
Will future paradise for the children of Chapeltown
be lost? I hope not. There's too much promise to be allowed to fall
by the wayside.
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