The two dozen teenagers who have met on the creaking second floor of Renaissance Center to watch a movie together one night in March are no strangers to their share of street violence. The Renaissance Center features a recording studio, replete with a drum set, a collection of electric and acoustic guitars, a row of microphones, and golden curtains for a backdrop. The teens come to perform songs they have written and composed about their life on the forlorn streets of the South Bronx, one of the poorest congressional districts in the country.
Once, some of the members of the center were recording a song about gun violence when a gunfight erupted across the street. But even these streetwise teens were about to be stunned, dumbfounded at what they were about to see projected on the wall of the Center on a wet, bone-cold winter night.
After sorting out some technical difficulties director John Richie, who had brought his movie “Shell Shocked,” as part of a tour of northeast cities, started the film. “Shell Shocked” is a documentary about gun violence and youth in America’s murder capital, New Orleans where, as one teenager interviewed in it says, it’s easier to get a gun than a textbook.
[For more of this story, written by Daryl Khan, go to http://jjie.org/south-bronx-te...ans-violence/107655/]
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