"Louder Than A Bomb," "Soul Boy" A Hit With PSUSD Students

Students from all over Coachella Valley packed the Palm Springs High School auditorium Wednesday morning to screen the documentary "Louder Than A Bomb" and "Soul Boy." Both films were received with enthusiastic applause by the students.

At left are two of the stars of the documentary, Nate Marshall and Novana Venerable.

The event was sponsored by the Palm Springs International Film Festival whose Programming/Education Outreach Coordinator is Ken Jacobson.

Following the screening, Jennifer Juarez, a student in Matt Hamilton and David Vogel's Digital Storytelling Class at Cathedral City High School, had a chance to interview "Louder Than A Bomb" director Greg Jacobs.

Jennifer: Why did you decide to do this documentary?

Director Greg Jacobs: I was driving by Wrigley Field in Chicago one night, in March of 2005, and I happened to pass by a club called The Metro. The marquee said "Louder Than A Bomb High School Slam Poetry Finals Tonight." There was a line of kids of every shape, size and color all the way down the street. It was so strange to see that kind of diversity on the north side of Chicago on a Saturday night--and for poetry. That meant there were kids inside reading their own poetry. We just thought that was a really interesting thing going on that we didn't know about so we decided to take a look.

Jennifer: What was your biggest challenge?

Director Greg Jacobs: The biggest challenge was how to go about telling the story. It took two years to edit it, and while we had done hundreds of other documentaries, we had never done a feature documentary before. It took a long time to figure out how to tell the story.

Jennifer: How did you pick the high students who are the stars of the documentary?

Director Greg Jacobs: We went the year before to the finals and decided we would take the measure of who was there and who was coming back. We knew that to make a documentary like this, the poems had to be great and the kids had to be interesting as well as great performers. Nate, Nova and the others just jumped out at us in the finals, and they were coming back. It was so obvious they were the great ones to follow. We picked them and only followed them, and they are unbelievable.