Galan and Giles

Our Co-Production partners, Calabash Animation (Chicago), worked on this amazing documentary by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The film is based on his lifelong passion project, "The greatest basketball team no one has ever heard of, The Harlem Rens." The team was the first African-American team to win a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, in 1939, years before Jackie Robinson became the first Black Major League Baseball player. Because the story is so unknown, a lot of animation, paintings and motion graphics were employed to compensate for this incredibly well told documentary. Calabash (Wayne Brejcha, the Creative Director and Sean Henry The Executive Producer) basically video storyboarded/animated the dramatic championship game since no film of the event ever survived.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar was part of a summer work program in Harlem in the late 60's, and he participated in a journalism workshop. He came across an "obscure" story about a sports team from Harlem that actually won the World Championship. Why had no one ever heard of them before? How was this not a seminal story in the history of sports? He says it changed his life, and he spent the next 40 years researching and writing the book that the film is based on.

The interviews in the film are riveting. Some of the original players are interviewed, as well as relatives, as well as some very big names in Basketball and Academia to give context around how profound a story this really was.

Calabash got us tickets to the NY premiere and it was really inspiring. Pat Giles attended for us (he goes to all the good parties) and got to meet the big man himself. We were all super proud of our buddies from the Windy City. We are committed geeks, and not at all sports fans, yet it was still an amazing film to watch. At least Giles says so, we are waiting for the DVD to come out.

Animation is often thought of as an entertainment tool, even for those who respect it deeply, but this was just one more case, as we hope we have shown in the last few postings, that it is also a powerful tool for education. Tomorrow we will talk about something we are super excited about, the USC conference "Learning From Hollywood," how filmmakers, animators, writers, game designers and marketers can revolutionize education in America. Giles is attending that for us too, so the next posting here better be good.