Keen to start working on his first documentary film project, second-grade school teacher John Bohm figured he would follow the lives of six troubled youth from his school in East Los Angeles.

Then a colleague told him about Jesuit Father Gregory Boyle and his ministry to help gang members out of gangs and into real jobs. Having grown up in upstate New York with three priest uncles, Bohm was intrigued.

"My uncles were very open-minded --- more like the social justice stuff," Bohm recently told The Tidings. "They were one with the community."

Bohm set out to meet Father Boyle at Homeboy Industries in the Boyle Heights barrio of East L.A.

"When you cross the threshold of the place, it's brewing with life," recalled Bohm while sitting in a child's school chair, having just removed his bow tie. He contrasted the hope at Homeboys with what he'd seen on television. "You hear so much on the media about kids involved in gangs and the terror that they've wreaked, the havoc that has gone on."

Teaching at RFK Elementary School in City Terrace, an area surrounded by gang violence, Bohm wanted to understand how Homeboys could create such a radically different environment where former enemy gang members worked side by side answering phones, making t-shirts, landscaping gardens, or kneading bread at a bakery.

It was more than four years ago, when Bohm, a parishioner at St. Peter Church in Los Angeles, began tutoring "homies" in GED preparation at Homeboys and started interviewing youth --- amassing more than 100 hours of film.

He wanted to chronicle the lives of several youth as they struggled to get out of gangs or heal from drug and alcohol addictions and dysfunctional family backgrounds. Father Boyle's determination to stand by these young men and women, no matter what, was a catalyst for profound personal change which Bohm wanted to capture on film.

But Bohm, 41, and his first film editor struggled for more than a year over creative differences --- whether to make the film a soulful character study or edit it into quick cuts ala MTV style. The two finally parted ways and Bohm found a kindred spirit in Pete Tapia, a film editor looking for a meaty film to work on, following a string of documentaries and B-movies.

Bohm handed him a three-hour rough cut movie to check out.

"There were bits and pieces of everything. But the characters were not fully developed," said Tapia. He wanted to look at the raw footage again to see if it could be recut.

For the next 11 months, Bohm and Tapia worked on recutting the documentary and shooting additional film to track the lives of three young men and one woman --- Frances Aguilar, Joe Aleman, Gabriel "Spider" Hinojos and Joey Ray Lucero. The film, "Father G and the Homeboys," documents the quartet's three-year battle to overcome drug addictions, complete prison terms, get tattoos removed, reunite with their children, and hold onto jobs.

Tattoo removal becomes a metaphor for stripping away the demonization of a gang member and getting to see the tender, hurt human being underneath who's still hanging on to a glimmer of hope for a better life.

Bohn also hopes that filmgoers come away with "a deeper understanding of what these kids go through. You can't lump them all together. If you take time to listen to their back story, you'll have a deeper understanding of why they have gone this route."

Tapia, 37, found in the film a way to make sense of his years growing up in La Puente with gang members living next door while he also attended St. Joseph Church with his family.

"[Doing this film] was a bit of catharsis for me, because I had a lot of anger towards these kind of guys. There was always that threat I would see people dying in my neighborhood," said Tapia, who is now a father to three young daughters.

"When John brings me the [footage] and I really got to meet people --- just people as opposed to homies or as opposed to cholos --- that was good for me. And that's what I wanted to translate. If I could feel this way, then I should be able to make an audience feel this way.

"Everyone has all these good or bad things in them," continued Tapia, sporting khaki shorts and a ponytail. "If given a chance, they could choose to go toward the good."

Another challenge was making a film that crosses racial and class lines in reaching its audience.

"When I'm cutting," said Tapia, "I think about different audiences. How will different audiences respond to the same thing? I wanted to make sure the film didn't feel fake to the homies or to people I grew up with who are a little more hard.

"West Side white folks would tend to be horrified by a lot of stuff in the first half, whereas the guys I grew up with think it's funny. Especially if they've made it through and everything is cool, they can look back on it. It's not as threatening to them."

Already the film, narrated by Martin Sheen, has garnered several awards, including best documentary from the Buffalo Niagra Film Festival. It will be featured at the upcoming Dances with Films Festival July 8 at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

The one hour and forty minute documentary was recently screened at Cal State L.A. to a largely Boyle Heights crowd, after which former gang members in the audience stood up and recounted their stories of leaving gang life.

That was sweet satisfaction for Bohm who's financed the $103,000 documentary from his teacher's salary, Cal Teacher's Credit Union loans, and a fundraiser that brought in $6,000 from family, friends and Homeboy staff and supporters. He's now seeking a distributor for the film.

Was it worth it? "Absolutely," said Bohm. "The pain in these kids is so severe that they lash out in horrific ways. But once they begin to release the pain in proper ways, the love begins to creep in - love of others and love of themselves. Nothing is more satisfying than just watching someone's spirit grow."