Share
clip 3Clip description
Fadi, the coach of his son’s Under 6 soccer team, holds a postmortem with the boys. Ahmed, one of the ICRA volunteers, collects the freshly printed ‘All Eyez on Youth’ posters and flyers and sets about distributing them. Back in the office of his panelbeating business, Fadi takes a phone call from the local council about the need for a development application for ICRA’s new use of the old Masonic Hall.
Curator’s notes
This segment gives a feel for the many different strands of activity in Fadi’s busy life. Fadi coaches his son’s Under 6 soccer team, and the clip commences at the end of a match, just after the team has suffered a defeat. The actual match footage (not included in the clip) is very cute and hilarious. Anyone who has coached, or even watched, a littlies’ sporting team will relate to it. While it’s clear that Fadi’s frustration with his little team has more to do with outside pressures than with the boys’ confusion about whose goal is whose, we (the audience) are more concerned about how on earth he finds the time to coach a soccer team.
Meanwhile, publicity for the visit by Napoleon, to be held at Homebush, is underway. In the car on the way to Lakemba Mosque to distribute the flyers, Ahmed talks about how he became involved with Fadi and ICRA. Napoleon Outlaw (Mutah Wassin Shabazz Beale) is a former gangsta rapper who, after the shooting death of Tupac Shakur, turned his back on gangsta culture and began preaching non-violence. On the night of the Cronulla riots, Fadi was at the Lakemba Mosque where a crowd had gathered. He and others from ICRA had gone there to try to calm the angry mob. It was then that they realised the imperative and urgency of promoting alternatives to violence.
Back at Fadi’s panelbeating business, Fadi takes a phone call from the local council. At this point in the film, the council has issued a directive indicating that a development application should have been approved before ICRA put the building it rents (an old Masonic Temple) to use as a Youth Centre and gym. ICRA made no changes to the structure of the building, so assumed a DA wasn’t necessary. Later in the film ICRA submits a DA, only to be rejected on the grounds of contravention of zoning regulations – the street has been rezoned residential. At the end of the film the Council has declared the building unsafe for public use and the building’s owner refuses to undertake the necessary repairs.
