MSA provided a free great event for the community this past Sunday. It was a screening of Wayward Son: The story of Jordan Ritcher.The short 40-minute documentary is based on the true-life a conversion story of Jordan Ritcher.
The documentary – Spoiler alert!
He was raised in Los Angeles into a Jewish family. He explained how his parents were drug users and he would often find his mother pasted out on the floor or falling asleep at the wheel. He experimented with drugs and admitted himself into a psychiatric hospital. But that was only a minor detail to his story. He began to skateboard at the age of 16 and became professional. During his teenage years he remembers seeing a whole street of chaos but observed three Muslim men calm. He soon after began to learn about Islam and then converted. The moral of the story was after his conversion he became what he called “pet projects” for Muslims. The more spiritual as a convert or “revert” as he referred to himself became the more it reflected upon those who were guiding him during his conversion. He also followed conservative alims who told him skateboarding was haram and gave up his passion. Jordan later realizes that skateboarding is not haram and decides to get back to skating.
Meeting the Director
The director Mustafa Davis answered questions after the screening. He explained about how the it took a period of eight months to film the progression of Jordan skating again after 15 years at the age of 36 to get better to show him in competitions. The director explained about his crew of only two other sound guys to help create a more relaxed environment for those he films documentaries of. WNYMuslims was able to sit down and talk further with Mustafa who further explained about the elements of a documentary having a protagonist, antagonist and a goal. Mustafa inferred that the more challenging a goal of the protagonist the more interesting a documentary will be. In his short documentary the protagonist was Jordan Ritcher, the antagonist was the Muslim community and the goal was for Jordan to relearn how to skate. He mentioned other technical tips for creating documentaries such as having an editor that hasn’t had any part of the filming, because those involved in filming if it took a few hours to get an eight minute segment due to rain would use that in the final cut even if the quality or message isn’t as strong.