‘THERE was something missing in the footages taken in London. We had to go to to Koronadal to look at one young football athlete.”
Those were the words of documentarian, Baby Ruth Villarama, the person behind the engaging and moving documentary, Little Azkals. She was referring to Kano, this character of a kid who was one of those chosen to undergo trainings for the under-11 football players in UK. The program was geared at developing children into football players of the future. The training is not a one-shot deal but one that is ambitious. Part of this plan is to follow through the lives and skills development of the children who started in London one late Spring some years ago.
The sports program is aimed at nurturing what one of the boys described as “pure Askals” The reference is the many mixed-blood football players who came back to the country not only to seek their roots but to contribute as well to the development of a sport that is quite new to the sports buff in the country. Outstanding among this wave of sports heroes are the Younghusband brothers,
The documentary begins with the selection of the children who were coming from all walks of life, and from different places in the country. Once pruned to a team, the bunch of kids trooped to the British Embassy so they could seek audience with the British ambassador.
England is considered the proud capital of football, The documentary showed the children preparing for their trip to England, where they would stay for three weeks,
Villarama emphasized during the open forum that the magic and the risk, of a documentary for it to work is to open it to possibilities. Villarama who graduated with a degree in Journalism recalled that afternoon in De La Salle in DasmariĖas that one of the things she learned from school is the readiness to anticipate,
In London, armed with a camera, Villarama was overwhelmed with one thing: this documentary was really about the boys representing the country. Awesome was the responsibility and England gazing back at her with its huge history of the sport was heartbreaking.
There are heartbreaks and heartbreaks in the documentary. At a certain point, two boys could not almost make it to the trip after someone bungled their DSWD papers.
As the training progressed, we see the kids slowly acclimatized but we forget one thing – these are kids. They will miss their home. They will miss their parents, their fathers and mothers. They will miss the food that their mothers cook for them.
The child-athletes had to deal also with the bruises and sprains they had while undergoing training, Are the wounds and scars and loneliness worth the special training? Many women and men in the audience were moved by what the kids had to go through. And these kids will cry once they could not bear the situations anymore.
The documentary done by Baby Ruth Villarama started from a simple premise. What happens when you bring to a foreign country boys who below eleven years of age for a training. What happens when you constantly advise them about the value of the training they are privileged to be part of? What happens when you need to convince them about the need to sacrifice comfort and other things? At the age of 10, heroism is a dense construct. The kids are clueless about the end-results of their training program.
The candor of the documentarian and the unique experiences of the very young boys are just two of the elements that make Little Azkals a warm, unpretentious, honest document.
It was a wise decision for Villarama, the documentarian, to focus on the children’s journey. There were side-trips to the lives and travails of the real Azkals. But in the end, we are interested in the children and how they cope with the monumental task ahead of them. We see this problem grow as we watch the film over and over.
I first saw this documentary by way of the screener sent to me by its producers. I then had the opportunity to view Little Azkals again in the recently completed Pasale, the film concourse held each year in Ateneo de Naga. There it was the closing film. Last Wednesday, February 18, I had the privilege again to feel the growing impact of the documentary as it opened the Calabarzon Film Festival in Cavite.
The applause at the end of the screening confirmed what I felt is the power of the documentary: the realities it is able to express. A part of this reality surfaces when Villarama and another filmmaker follow one of the children who returned from England. Kano is this boy. He is poor once more. The training facilities are substandard once more. And even when mothers help in feeding the children, we know that the diet is not comparable to what is given in England.
Kano represents all the children who aspire to be world-class or even just good footballers. He is there as the screen darkens, as he goes back, hunched, to the classroom with his meager food on the plate. The score he made in England is a memory.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Jimbo Albano