The documentary Soul in the Hole is set on the New York squares where street basketball is in its heyday. A team with the name Kenny’s Kings, their striking coach and their start player are followed throughout a long hot summer on the asphalt playgrounds of Brooklyn. Kenny Jones, the coach, has collected the very best of young basketball talent. During legendary street tournaments such as Soul in the Hole, It’s a Fila Thang and Lafayette Gardens his team climbs slowly up the league and beats the older, more established teams. This summer they are the team to beat. Ed ‘Booger’ Smith, their star striker is already a street legend at the age of eighteen. Three years earlier, Booger was thrown out of the house by his mother. He turned up on Kenny’s doorstep because he had nowhere else to go. Soul in the Hole concentrates on their special relationship, after Kenny took Booger off the street and became his surrogate father. Basketball is the archetypal New York street game. The game is played on every school playground. The film aims to fathom the lively subculture of the sport. The director Danielle Gardner and producer Lilibet Foster both stress that the final film is the result of the people they met and made friends with as the film was prepared and shot.
