Featured image: Yas Lucia Mascarenhas and Adomas Lukas Petrauskas

Manchester’s inner-city neighbourhood of Moss Side is often portrayed in the media as a dangerous area, plagued by knife crime and shootings. However, one resident and Manchester Met student – Baka Bah – believes this one-sided story doesn’t reflect the true spirit of his community.

While studying for his undergraduate degree in Film at Manchester Met, Bah began working on his documentary, The Success of Moss Side. His goal was to showcase a more nuanced perspective of the area, highlighting the stories and livelihoods of local residents.

Bah’s personal journey reflects the impact of media narratives on self-perception. He began to notice how the negative portrayal of Moss Side had started to affect him: “I found it weird that I always had an awkward feeling when mentioning where I come from, and I didn’t like that feeling. It didn’t sit well with me. After a while, I started questioning it: ‘Why do I feel like this about saying where I’m from?’” He adds: “Whenever I do say where I’m from, I automatically see labels pinging over my head. I see it in people’s reactions – the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs,’ like, ‘Oh, you’re from Moss Side?!’”

This sentiment led Bah to explore how pervasive media narratives shape perceptions: “If people have this narrative that there’s only death, there’s only stabbings, there’s only crime, there’s only drugs, there’s only bad ethnic groups within an area, that it’s somewhere you should stay far away from because there’s so many bad things happening, the people [who live there will] begin to feel like that’s what they are.”

Bah recognises some simple areas for improvement when it comes to accurate and truthful representation. When typing ‘Moss Side’ into Google, Bah says he only sees back-to-back negative articles. “There’s a massive gap between the information that they’re getting and the information that they’re putting out.”

Perceptions of Moss Side are not just spread through word of mouth. Following the tragic death of his cousin Cheriff Tall at a street party in 2020, Bah experienced first-hand what being so close to recent news events in Moss Side was like. He explains that his strong connection to Moss Side led him to create the documentary, despite the tragedy: “I have a shared experience with my auntie through losing her son, like that was my cousin. Even through all that, I still felt the need to make this documentary to highlight that there’s more to Moss Side than that.”

In light of this, Bah’s documentary will feature the “unsung heroes” of his area, such as his auntie Suwaidu Sanyang, who felt the full strength of her community after the passing of her son. Football coach Ahmed Yassin will also be a focus of the documentary as it tells the story of how he started a football programme to help combat anti-social behaviour.

Bah challenges the tendency to focus solely on issues, advocating for well-rounded narratives with a critical purpose. He explains: “People like to pick up an issue and concentrate on the issue, but I don’t want to do that. I want to recognise there’s an issue because it’s very important to recognise something, but I want to concentrate on the solutions and how we can move forward in understanding what the scope of this issue actually is.”

Bah was inspired to use his passion for filmmaking to make something that would help bring truth to the rhetoric surrounding the place he calls home. Projects like this could change the futures of generations to come who deserve to see that their community is capable of goodness. “I’ve seen a lot of documentaries in the past and sometimes I get a feeling of ‘Is the story being told the way the people themselves would tell it?’ And that’s not the feeling I wanted people to have from this documentary.”

As an enthusiastic film student, Bah’s love for documentaries helped him realise the importance of who is on the production team, who is in the writing room and who makes the final edits. He explains that those contributing to his documentary were involved throughout the whole editing process. “Even down to the B-roll and stock material that we used, it all came directly from them, so everything originated from the source,” he says. “I feel like it’s a much truer representation of the story when you have that kind of approach towards a project.”

Bah says that his audience might be most surprised by Moss Side’s “level of warmth” He explains: “That’s the type of community that Moss Side is. It’s an ‘everybody knows everybody’ tight-knit community. People will stop to speak to each other. From leaving your house to going to the shops, you will get stopped by ten people and speak to ten people because it’s just that sort of community.

“Moss Side is a slice of happiness. It’s a slice of joy, a slice of sadness, a slice of endurance, a slice of culture and a slice of difference. I feel like Moss side is an example to the rest of the UK of how people from so many different backgrounds and cultures can co-exist and thrive despite all the adversity society places on them.”

In pursuing this project, Bah has been pleasantly surprised by how his community put their faith in him, just as he has done for them. “In all honesty, I was shocked at the level of interaction that I had with the story and the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing. I didn’t think there would be enough people that cared, I don’t know why. Even though I have faith in it, I didn’t have faith in the people, which I’m now realising was wrong.”

The experience of highlighting the positivity in Moss Side has moved this filmmaker in more ways than he could have imagined, as he aims to become the “opposite of ignorance”. Bah says: “Working on this film showed me the importance of actually finding out the full story rather than just having an idea, a one track mind; tunnel vision, riding that idea. I’ve learnt to really strip things back and delve deep into the different sides and different layers of a subject.”

To anyone wanting to be a bigger part of their community and inspire others, Bah says: “Go and do the little things. Figure out where you stand within the community, who you are within that community first, and try to actually understand the community.”

Bah has set up a GoFundMe page for The Success of Moss Side to raise funds for the project, with the hope that it will be showcased in cinemas.

Bah’s documentary project was initially funded through the Rise programme at Manchester Met through our 200 year celebrations. If you’re interested in running community-facing projects, check out Rise at rise.mmu.ac.uk

Follow @baka_bah on Instagram.