i am superman is a wonderful documentary film about the history and current situation around troost st. in kansas city.

though the sound quality of the film might not be the best, i still got goose bumps from the opening lines in the film:

“today i will not be afraid to be great.
today i will have a vision for my life.
today i will not participate in my destruction.”

those were the sentiments from the ‘man class’ graduation ceremony, that aimed at teaching males in the community responsibility of what it means to really be a man. an inspired concept, in my opinion.

i thought the entire film was pretty emotional, i’m not going to lie, i teared up a few times. there were some shocking statistics comparing the east and west sides of troost, including a dropout percentage that was over 50%. and just pointing out the major divide that exists east and west of troost in kansas city, and the issue that we need to bring this city back together. what stuck with me the most from the film, though, was when the woman that worked in the school told the story about giving the four year old boy a ride home and him saying that if he grew up, he wanted to be a firefighter. “a four year old boy should say WHEN i grow up, not IF i grow up.” and then at the end when they had all the kids saying what they wanted to be when they grew up, was really motivational, because they are the future and anything is possible. and we should be working to make it a better kansas city for them “i am willing to sacrifice for those coming after me”.

it really got the gears turning in my head and also brought to mind a few other things i have found inspiration from that i recommend to anyone and everyone:

life in a day

What happens when you send a request out to the world to chronicle, via video, a single day on Earth? You get 80,000 submissions and 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries. Producer Ridley Scott and Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald took this raw material — all shot on July 24, 2010 — and created Life in a Day, a groundbreaking, feature-length documentary that portrays this kaleidoscope of images we call life. Prepare to be amazed.

where children sleep
http://jamesmollison.com/books/where-children-sleep/

stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms. When Fabrica asked me to come up with an idea for engaging with children’s rights, I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected what I had and who I was. It occurred to me that a way to address some of the complex situations and social issues affecting children would be to look at the bedrooms of children in all kinds of different circumstances. From the start, I didn’t want it just to be about ‘needy children’ in the developing world, but rather something more inclusive, about children from all types of situations. –james mollison