This is a documentary covering 5 high school seniors in a small mid-western town of Warsaw, Indiana. The jock, pretty-girl princess, rebel, band geek and lover boy are represented from the Class of 2006 as they go through the insecurities and emotional turmoil that is inherent in high schoolers preparing for an uncertain future.
Culled from 1000 hours of footage, filmmaker Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) tackled this project wanting to show how formative High School is by showing the fears and fantasies that each student bares on screen. From the pressures of an athletic father pushing for college scholarship or the military, the family legacy of going to Notre Dame, grandparents not believing in dreams and all looking forward to remaking themselves away from home; this film shows the stereotypes that we all had to live with and show that each level of society has its own pressures.
On top of the documentary footage, some of the internal wishful thinking of each student is shown as animated shorts, illustrating the naive view of the world that we all shared at that point in time.
Looking back on my high school years while watching this, its interesting to note that the themes are pretty much universal. We all have family reputations to live with, fears about our futures and dreams of starting anew elsewhere, anywhere. While not for most people, and especially those who don’t look back fondly on high school, its much better than most of the reality crap on television these days.
Recommend.
Tags: American Teen, Documentary, Nanette Burstein, SIFF
June 1, 2008 at 8:41 pm |
This one always looked interesting from the first time I saw the trailer, and maybe even a little bit more for me because I have lived very close to where this was filmed for a long time. I am very excited to see it.
June 27, 2008 at 5:03 am |
Yeah, I really liked it as well.