Undefeated
Directed By: Daniel
Lindsay and T.J. Martin
Featuring: Bill
Courtney, O.C. Brown, Montrail ‘Money’ Brown, and Chavis Daneils
Cinematography By: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Edited
By: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Original Music: Michael Brook, Daniel
McMahon, and Miles Neilsen
Rated: PG-13 for
the naughty language often heard on football fields.
The
great debate on documentaries is often whether the filmmaker is responsible for
the quality of the film, or if it is simply the power of what is being filmed.
It is somewhat of a moronic debate to say the least (content and style go hand
in hand), however, something must be said for documentaries that simply have
the camera in the right place at the right time. We can think of the chaos in Gimme Shelter, the insanity of Francis
Ford Coppola in Hearts of Darkness,
or the stirring funeral speech Ameena Matthews gives in The Interrupters.
Undefeated, a documentary about a small
town football team that is part sports drama, part coming-of-age tale,
certainly falls into the category of the later. I’m not sure what directors
Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin expected when they turned their cameras toward
the fields of Manassas High School, a place of no hope among a poor,
predominantly black neighborhood of Memphis. However, after whittling hours
upon hours of footage from the school’s unbelievable season, Undefeated has turned into a stirring
portrait of discipline and character, and more rousing than most fictional
sports movies.
