Ball and the City: Life Lessons of teamwork

Ball and the City: Life Lessons of teamwork

Ball and the City Director/Writer
Filbert Wong (All photos provided by the author)

PINOY BASKETBALL DOCUMENTARY

By Michelle Chermaine Ramos
The Philippine Reporter

The three Bs that unite Filipinos are boxing, beauty pageants and basketball. Ball and the City is a documentary exploring Filipino-Canadians’ longtime obsession with basketball and how the sport became deeply ingrained in the Filipino-Canadian culture for generations.

Eddie Semira of Phil-Can Athletic Club in Toronto

But why shoot a documentary on basketball? Director/Writer Filbert Wong explained that basketball has always had a huge impact on the Filipino community and played a role in uniting and growing it over decades and across generations. Reflecting on his memories over 20 years ago before social media existed, he realized that basketball was one of the best ways to get together with families and to network. “Filipinos tend to be conscious of social status. In basketful culture, that doesn’t exist. We tend to be critical of someone’s education, degree, their school, salary, their grasp of English, how they dress, who their relatives are here. That’s our society. But in basketball, it’s not like that. As long as you can shoot the ball in the net, you’re important. It’s really teamwork. That’s what’s missing in society outside basketball,” Wong explains.

While covering several games for Filipino TV over the years, Wong and his team noticed that in a lot of intercity games, many of the champions came from other provinces. Seeing the players’ passion for the sport inspired them to dig into the stories of other Filipino basketball communities in Canada during a cross-country trip right before the first lockdown started in March, 2020 when COVID-19 started spreading in Toronto. The film features interviews with coaches Eddie Semira of the Phil-Can Athletic Club in Toronto, Manny Aranez of the Philippine Basketball Association in Winnipeg, Kelvin Dela Pena of Rise Up Hoops in Calgary, Nap Santos of Dream Hoops in Vancouver and Dawn Eswar of the Philippine Sports Association in Edmonton.

In Toronto, the first Filipino league was founded in 1968 when early Filipino immigrants who met in church connected through playing basketball and the community snowballed from there. The weekend games helped new OFWs and immigrants assimilate, eliminating temptations and other distractions while coping with being away from their families especially in the days before social media. Wong also noticed that even now with social media, interactions are more superficial. “It’s easy to like for the sake of liking kasi baka may masabi ang iba. It’s so easy to comment and vice versa, but sa totoo iba naman yoong totoo mong nararamdaman. But sa court, mas totoo yoong interaction and engagement.” With practice sessions being family affairs, the sport gives older players something to look forward to as an escape from the grind while providing a sense of belonging. For the youth, teams provide a safe positive environment for them to enjoy camaraderie while learning important life lessons of teamwork.

Dawn Eswar of Philippine Sports Association in Edmonton

When asked what he hopes people will learn from this film, Wong states that his goal is to share important takeaways that he hopes people will carry into the Filipino community at large – especially teamwork. “I hope this basketball culture inspires the whole Filipino community to give and take to sustain our community especially now with the pandemic that we’ve lost social engagement and interaction. If the foundation is not ok, it will fall apart. And we’ve seen in the community, especially in our generation and the early generation, the reason there has been a lot of conflict is because I think it’s not as strongly grounded as how the Filipino basketball community achieved unity. Despite the rivalry, physical injuries, shouting and swearing during games, after the game, it’s a stronger collective community. That’s what’s inspiring about basketball culture.”

Watch it for free at https://ballandthecity.com/

Nap Santos of Dream Hoops in Vancouver

Kelvin Del Pena of Rise Up Hoops in Calgary

Manny Aranez of the Philippine Basketball Association in Winnipeg