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Even before the opening credits of This Is North Preston start rolling, the question starts rolling around in your head, “Why would a white filmmaker from Toronto be bringing the story of Canada’s largest black community to the big screen?”

It’s a question that Jaren Hayman likely asked himself on more than one occasion as he headed into the project, which begins a week-long engagement at Cineplex Theatres in Dartmouth Crossing on Friday. But once he began learning about the town from Nova Scotia-born musician Just Chase, he began wondering why its story hadn’t been told on a broader scale before, and enlisted the singer’s help to bring it to the rest of the country.

The follow-up to Hayman’s first documentary, Bodyguards: Secret Lives from the Watchtower, This Is North Preston begins as Chase’s story, growing up in the community and working for his dad’s trucking company before heading to Toronto and following his dream of making music. But that’s just the entry point into a bigger picture that stretches from the arrival of the Black Loyalists during the American Revolution nearly 250 years ago through the anti-slavery Underground Railroad’s path to freedom in Nova Scotia and today’s fiercely proud community pushing back against decades of systemic racism.

“Hearing Chase speak about the town, he called it ‘the Atlanta of the North’, and the more we talked about it, the more interested I became in doing something on it,” says Hayman, a former musician who befriended the singer after meeting his manager in Toronto.

“The film took on a lot of different lives over the course of making it, from filming to post-production, starting out as a look into Chase’s world but then painting a bigger macrovision of the town itself from more of a bird’s eye view.”

The film’s timing couldn’t be better for Chase, who left home four years ago to kickstart his music career with the help of Canadian hip-hop star Kardinal Offishall, who featured him on his top 10 single That Chick Right There. Since then he’s released a number of compelling tracks featuring his expressive and versatile voice and, following a publishing deal with California-based Pulse Music Group, he’s now working in Los Angeles with a new eight-song release debuting along with the film on Friday.

But he doesn’t want to move forward without letting listeners know from where he’s been, and is eager to share his home town with the rest of the world.

“It feels tremendous, I can’t really explain it, but it feels great being able to tell my story and the story of the community and its history, and how it all comes together,” says Chase, who feels a need to counter the impression left by national news stories focusing on sex trafficking and gun violence.

“People take our story the wrong way, but there’s negative things going on everywhere. There’s also a whole beautiful side of North Preston; you’ve got basketball players going on to the NBA, there are doctors and lawyers and professionals, there are talented singers, a whole variety of people.

“When people watch this story, I don’t want them to think it’s just about the negative side, I want to shed light on the positive side as well.”

Hayman’s film features community leaders like Black Cultural Centre historian Gary James and local advocate Miranda Cain to get a better sense of North Preston’s rich history and ongoing challenges. From getting to know Chase and visiting the community, he soon realized there was a dichotomy between how North Preston is perceived and what the everyday realities are of growing up and living there.

“The majority of Canadians don’t know about it, and as an outsider going in with an unbiased view I wanted to hear these voices and try to tell both sides of the story as truthfully as possible,” says the filmmaker, who knew he’d face challenges earning his subjects’ trust while addressing the struggles faced by the community.

“I was really upfront with my intentions, I let people know I wasn’t going to shy away from some of the issues that people face here, and look at the how and the why.

“I didn’t want to paint everyone with the same brush. Yes, there are problems, but they’re rooted in decades and decades of problems that we wanted to address. Having Chase’s co-sign really helped too, but I think people felt comfortable with me when I put all my cards on the table, and I even brought them in during the editing process, to see if there were certain things that didn’t jibe with the message they were trying to get across.”

The film also includes interviews with Halifax mayor Mike Savage and Halifax Regional Police officers, discussing cycles of poverty and crime that have led to feelings of isolation and distrust of a system that is stacked against North Preston’s residents. It takes a dark and troubling detour into a world of sex trafficking with East Coast roots and features women who’ve escaped its grip of violence and exploitation, all of which Hayman says has created a negative image that needs to be rectified.

“These stereotypes have been there for years, so for people to get an inside look at the community and empathize a little bit more and understand a little bit more, that’s how perceptions can change and change can really happen,” he says. “Perhaps bridging that gap across the divide that exists in Nova Scotia, and not just with North Preston, will help people understand what’s going on right now with racial issues like the street checks.”

- Contributed

This Is North Preston addresses that current issue by featuring one of its best-known citizens, professional heavyweight boxer Kirk Johnson, who took a stand against street checks and traffic stops after he was stopped by police 28 times over a five-year period and won a civil rights lawsuit against Halifax Regional Police in 2003.

Over the past 15 years, Johnson’s courtroom victory seemed to have little effect on the practice, until recent public outrage forced the city’s hand, and Hayman feels that could be the subject of a whole other film.

“I had no idea about street checks until I was there, and it was front page news while we were filming,” he recalls. “Kirk really made it clear for us, otherwise we didn’t have the resources to do a deep dive on it. Looking back, it would have been nice to go further into the issue, but we weren’t really equipped for it at the time.”

Now that the film is out, Chase wants to do more to spread word to the rest of Canada about North Preston’s artistic and athletic talent, but also he also hopes his success continues so he can give back to the community and serve as a positive example for its youth who’ve grown up in similar circumstances.

“Eventually I’d like to run a program at the rec centre for the youth, so they can learn more about which direction they can go,” he says.

“I want to come in and talk to them, tell them what I’ve been through, and let them know there’s more to life than what they see and what they think it is.