Like many kids in South Los Angeles, Nikko thought that he had only two ways out of the ghetto: sport or the gangs. He was concentrating on the first, by playing on the Helen Keller Park basketball team, when the second got the better of him.

“I remember the day he went home to get some equipment,” said Cameron Bonner, a volunteer at the park, which is located off a dreaded section of the 110 freeway, between the gang-controlled suburbs of Compton and Gardena.

“Nikko was in a car with his cousins, I think. Someone just rolled up on ’em, right outside here, and let ’em have it. He got hit in the head. He was all of 14 years old. In 2004 we lost five or six lives like that.

“Even the people who lived here didn’t want to come to Helen Keller no more. To us, Nikko’s death was a symbol: we were tired of being tired.”

Then came help — from the unlikeliest of places. Through an unrelated charity, Mr Bonner met Katy Haber, a British film producer and board member of Bafta/LA, the Hollywood offshoot of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.The random meeting ultimately resulted in a bizarre alliance of British film-makers and park officials that has brought about a gangland truce, reduced the murder rate in and around the park to zero and attracted the support of Miramax Films, which erected a marquee in the park last Saturday for a screening of Tsotsi, an Oscar-nominated South African film. The 250 or so audience members included the British and South African consuls-general, as well as the film’s director and lead actor.

Only a few months ago, no one would have dared to venture into the park after dusk. “To me, it’s ironic that it was the Brits who came out to this little enclave in the middle of nowhere and literally changed people’s lives,” Ms Haber said as she stood in the park’s recreation room. “Such a small investment can have such a huge effect.”

Within months of meeting Mr Bonner, Ms Haber, who grew up in North London and began her film career by working with the director Sam Peckinpah, had found money to convert the dilapidated Helen Keller Park recreation room into a 55-seat film theatre. The equipment was donated by Bafta, the UK Film Council and the nearby Skirball Cultural Centre. It is the only cinema within a 15-mile radius. That was only the beginning. Impressed by the transformation, the Los Angeles parks department gave Helen Keller Park more money, and the Los Angeles Police Department gave mobile phones to the park leaders and other volunteers, so they could report any gang activity.

Meanwhile, Mr Bonner and Marvo Hider, the recreation services leader at the park, began negotiating a truce with gangs, of which there are at least ten in the vicinity. Mr Hider said: “The problem is when the gangbangers are just sittin’ here in the park, hangin’ out, drinkin’ some beers, or havin’ a barbecue. The rival gangs hear about it. And then we get the drive-bys (shootings). A bullet don’t have no name on it — it can hit anyone.”

Since Bafta became involved, Mr Hider has convinced the gangs to stay away. No one died in or near the park last year. The park, with its swings, slides, basketball court and screening room, is safe for local children.

The ceasefire is holding firm. Mr Hider said: “Right now, if the gangbangers don’t want to be part of the solution, they at least don’t have to be part of the problem.”

Read Chris Ayres’s weblog

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