After being initiated into a gang in a Columbia neighborhood., a Columbia man decides to turn his life around and document gang life in South Carolina.
"If I don't tell the story, I don't know when the story will ever be told," Director Terry Davis said.
Deep in The Summit on the Northeast side of town sits the Maywood neighborhood.
Terry Davis remembers playing basketball just like these kids, but the streets were much meaner.
"It upgraded to committing crimes and a lot of it was just misplaced attention, misplaced effort," Davis said.
Davis said he joined a gang in the neighborhood and things got out of hand when another gang moved in.
"It became more of a now we've got to protect our neighborhood, so the crime rate went up, gangs started going to war with each other and that's when people started realizing this gang stuff was real," Davis said.
In 2013, Davis and his childhood friend Marcus McCall decided to make a movie about the gangs not only in Maywood, but around South Carolina.
They titled the film "Colors: Bangin in South Carolina."
Everyone wasn't too happy about the release.
"We entered the post production stage where we started having trailers and YouTube clips and people actually saw what we had footage of that's when we started getting a little backlash and all the threats and things of that nature," McCall said.
The duo just returned from a trip to the big apple to showcase the documentary to the Manhattan Film Festival.
And they walked away with an award naming them the most impactful film.
"They say if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere so to be able to make it in New York and be recognized and get an award is real valuable to us," McCall said.
Davis and McCall are currently working on two other documentaries and said they won't be making another gang film for quite some time.
They're hoping to showcase the documentary in state by next fall.
For more on "Colors" you can go to their website.
