{"id":28972,"date":"2018-06-01T03:58:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T10:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=28972"},"modified":"2018-05-30T15:52:37","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T22:52:37","slug":"new-nfb-series-on-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/06\/01\/new-nfb-series-on-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"New NFB series on basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Sidhoo\u2019s new docuseries, True North<\/em>, looks at the youth basketball scene in Toronto. (photo by Yasin Osman)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWherever I travel, I go play pickup basketball and I always make friends, and maybe end up at someone\u2019s house for dinner … you go ask to play basketball on someone\u2019s court, there\u2019s always that moment of, \u2018Who is this guy?\u2019 but, once you get out there and you start playing, it\u2019s an inviting, universal sport that you don\u2019t need a lot to participate in,\u201d filmmaker Ryan Sidhoo told the Independent<\/em> in a phone interview from Toronto.<\/p>\n

Sidhoo is the creator and director of True North<\/em>, a nine-part online docuseries produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Red Bull Media House about the youth basketball scene in Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore and more young Canadians are playing basketball \u2013 over 350,000 according to the 2014 Canada Youth Sports Report \u2013 and the trend is particularly pronounced in and around Toronto, where a wave of second- and third-generation Canadians are shaping Canada\u2019s new game,\u201d notes an NFB blog about the series. It also notes that, \u201cCanada now has over a dozen players in the NBA [National Basketball Association], more than any other outside country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In episodes ranging from 15 to 23 minutes, True North<\/em> examines \u201cthe rise of the Toronto hoop dream through the stories of five young athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series \u2013 which was three years in the making \u2013 \u201chas a multigenerational appeal,\u201d said Sidhoo, who spoke with players, coaches and families. Given the subject matter and format, he said younger viewers enjoy it but that, also, people closer to the age of the parents of the kids featured get something out of it from a parenting point of view.<\/p>\n

In the series format, he said, we can tell in-depth stories, \u201cbut then that 15-minute episode has to be focused on one kid and their journey. I think that\u2019s an appeal of the series, because they\u2019re highly personal episodes and they\u2019re not trying to do too much at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sidhoo has worked on various projects, including for Pulse Films, MTV and NBCUniversal, and he has produced and directed content across various VICE platforms; he was the creator and executive producer of Welcome to Fairfax<\/em>, a 10-part docuseries for Participant Media about a group of young entrepreneurs in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Vancouver, he\u2019s since lived in California and New York. It was in New York that he earned his master\u2019s in media studies, with a focus on documentary filmmaking, from the New School, in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe seeds of the project were really planted at that time,\u201d he said, referring to True North<\/em>. At the New School, he wanted to do a project \u201con this old streetball legend named Fly Williams, who I\u2019d read about in a book my dad had given me as a kid called Heaven is a Playground<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his search for Williams, Sidhoo ended up at a few different basketball tournaments. At the time, YouTube was just taking off, he said. \u201cWhat I was seeing at these gyms in New York were these parents marketing their children as the next best basketball phenom. You started to see this cottage industry around youth basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fascinated by this, Sidhoo said he kept his finger on the pulse of that world. He noticed that Canadians were having a lot of success getting into the NBA and the question of how basketball became significant in Canada led him to Toronto, \u201cthe epicentre of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me,\u201d said Sidhoo of his love of basketball, \u201cgrowing up in Vancouver, and, especially, having immigrant roots on both sides \u2013 my mom is Ashkenazi, they came from Poland and Winnipeg and eventually Vancouver, [while] my dad\u2019s side of the family is from India \u2013 I just think that the popular sport in Canada is, obviously, hockey, and winter sports in general have more of a built-in tradition \u2026 [but] basketball lends itself to newcomers to a country, so my dad gravitated towards basketball as a kid. For me, growing up, basketball was always in the house, it was always on TV, it was something that I was around and I, naturally, through my dad, was introduced to the sport\u2026. Of course, I like hockey and Wayne Gretzky and all that, but basketball was the thing that was a part of my identity … I always felt comfortable in the niche community of basketball in Vancouver because it was really diverse and it was very multicultural. As someone who had these mixed backgrounds, I felt at home in that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sidhoo played in various leagues in Vancouver, as well as participating in more than one JCC Maccabi Games. He described as \u201cpivotal,\u201d the Kitsilano Youth Basketball, run by Mel Davis, a former Harlem Globetrotter. Davis\u2019s son, Hubert Davis, directed Hardwood<\/em>, a documentary (also produced by the NFB) about his relationship with his father and basketball. When Sidhoo saw that film, he said he had two thoughts: \u201cone, that\u2019s amazing, because I know Mel and remember Hubert refereeing the games but then, secondly, it\u2019s projects like that that plant the seed that, hey, maybe I could be a documentary filmmaker, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a kid, Sidhoo and his brother were encouraged to do what they wanted creatively. \u201cI\u2019d go out back and make videos of myself playing basketball,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dad was always showing us films that maybe he shouldn\u2019t have been showing us at that young an age, but explaining why he was showing them. So, basketball was always there and these offbeat films, or films that were aged above my viewing in terms of age appropriateness, that was always a constant, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up, he was also exposed to books, art shows and other culture. Sidhoo recalled his father taking him to one of the first Slam City Jams, a skateboard competition, in the early 1990s, when Sidhoo was 5 or 6 years old. \u201cBack then, skateboarding wasn\u2019t as corporate as it is now, it was still pretty punk,\u201d he said. And, while it was a bit different to be at such an event, \u201cat the same time, it\u2019s normal because I\u2019ve been consuming this kind of content and going to different, what you could call counter-culture, events, with my dad. So, the fascination with subculture was always there, along with basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

True North<\/em> is Sidhoo\u2019s first project with the NFB. He called the film board with his idea while in Vancouver, and spoke with Shirley Vercruysse, executive producer of NFB BC & Yukon Studio. \u201cShe was open-minded,\u201d said Sidhoo and connected him to the paperwork he\u2019d have to submit for the NFB to consider producing the documentary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I think attracted the National Film Board,\u201d he said, \u201cwas that basketball is shaping Canadian identity, because we\u2019re exporting so many amazing basketball players to the south that the perception of Canada is not just hockey anymore \u2026 basketball is part of the shifting Canadian identity. On a global, macro picture, that resonated with the film board. And then, also tapping into the human, story-driven documentary approach that I wanted to take is what the film board has been doing for a really long time. It spoke to a story that was big, but then also was told through the intimate, personal narratives of these kids. It was a nice combination for them, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

True North<\/em> is the first online docuseries for the NFB. It can be viewed on the NFB\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a> and on Red Bull TV<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Sidhoo\u2019s new docuseries, True North, looks at the youth basketball scene in Toronto. (photo by Yasin Osman) \u201cWherever I travel, I go play pickup basketball and I always make friends, and maybe end up at someone\u2019s house for dinner … you go ask to play basketball on someone\u2019s court, there\u2019s always that moment of, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5071,6968,5933,8179,4508],"class_list":["post-28972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-basketball","tag-national-film-board","tag-nfb","tag-ryan-sidhoo","tag-sports"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}