‘Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins & K.O.S.’

Since 1984, artist-educator Tim Rollins (pictured) has run his ambitious and demanding Kids of Survival program as a way of reaching out to troubled youths through art. Housed in an old South Bronx factory building, K.O.S. was launched with a mere $8,000 in seed money from the National Endowment for the Arts and is self-sustaining. Documentarians Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine focus on five Latino males, ranging in age from 13 to 20. All of them are very likable, but with the exception of the youngest, an honor student, they all have had either severe problems with learning--several are dyslexic--or truancy or both. This 1996 film becomes genuinely suspenseful in terms of how these students turn out and how well they cope with events outside the classroom in the months during which the filmmakers “eavesdrop” on their everyday lives as unobtrusively as the famous fly on the wall (Cinemax Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.).