Alive & Kicking Documentary – Honoring San Bernardino
Rockerrazzi Filmz has released its latest documentary – Alive & Kicking – featuring SoCal S.C. and its influence in the San Bernardino community following the tragic terrorist attacks that occurred one year ago.
Soccer News: One year ago, tragedy rocked San Bernardino, California. Fourteen
innocent lives were taken at the Inland Regional Center as two terrorists entered building #3 and began attacking people at a holiday event.
Rockerrazzi Filmz has released its latest documentary – Alive & Kicking – about the tragic event and how a local soccer team from San Bernardino helped to stitch that broken community back together.
Although more than two hundred thousand people call San Bernardino home, it exists in the shadow of its more glamorous neighbors. This only deepened on December 2, 2015, the day of the third-deadliest mass shooting in American history.
The mass media descended on the Inland Regional Center, and put the tragedy in the context of a global struggle between immigrants and natives, Muslims and Christians, and gun control proponents and Second Amendment absolutists. Lost amidst the noise was San Bernardino itself: its struggles with crime and drug addiction and depressed property values, and the everyday stories of its residents, many of whom are first-generation Americans battling to find a footing in the United States.
Rockerrazzi Filmz is here to change all of that. Alive And Kicking, a smart, tough-minded, and emotionally forthright documentary, is a chronicle of the real San Bernardino: a troubled but colorful city, one populated by survivors, and full of tales worth telling.
The sixty-minute film is the story of — San Bernardino’s newly-minted professional soccer club. Launched in late 2015, SoCal S.C. becomes a symbol of resiliency, a source of great local pride, and a route out of town for young athletes at risk of falling into poverty.
Director Jared Sagal takes us to the opening of the field and team tryouts, lets us peer inside the locker room, puts us on the field for the club’s matches, and shares the personal stories of the team’s magnetic players and coaches. Although Alive And
Kicking is, at heart, a celebration of soccer, Sagal never lets us forget that the club is
united in its mission to help a shattered city heal. One of the most unforgettable images in the film: members of SoCal S.C. taking the field with armbands bearing the names of victims of the shooting.
Alive And Kicking features interviews with San Bernardino civic leaders, budding-star soccer players coming into their powers, local sports executives (including plenty of irresistibly-watchable footage of SoCal S.C.’s fiery, charismatic general manager and team architect, in action) and ordinary workers at Inland Regional Center, whose passion for their jobs mirrors the pride felt by the members of the team.
It’s a history lesson about a great American city that has fallen on hard times, a compassionate human-interest story, an intervention in a contemporary debate, a plea for unity and understanding, and an advertisement for the sheer, fast-paced thrill of soccer.
Sagal, who has directed music videos for Rockerazzi, applies the lessons he’s learned in kinetic, guerrilla film-making to the field: his game sequences are edge-of-your-seat
stuff. It would be compelling viewing even if SoCal S.C.’s inaugural season hadn’t ended in an amazing, improbable, nail-biting sports moment — but it did, and Sagal was there to capture the excitement.
Rockerazzi Filmz is headquartered in Los Angeles, but Sagal is a native New Mexican, and his heart belongs to the Southwest. This is a passion project for the filmmakers — they really do love this oft-forgotten corner of the country, and they’re determined to call your attention to it.
Every frame radiates commitment and resolve. Moreover, Sagal is a soccer ambassador and a true believer in the art of the game: Young Ronaldo, his three-part film about a talented kid player, has earned more than 16 million views on YouTube. Alive And Kicking is the next logical step in his artistic journey — one filled with compassion and dazzling athletic feats — and we’re delighted to be able to share it with you.
Related Article: Young Ronaldo Short Film Inspires Soccer Lovers
Photo Credit: Rockerazzi Filmz
