Chain Camera (2001)

Wanting to make a film about American teenagers in the year 2000, filmmaker Kirby Dick took a novel approach; he went to John Marshall High School, a Los Angeles-area school with a racially and economically diverse student body, and gave ten portable video cameras to ten students, asking them to document their lives however they pleased for one week. Then each student passed his or her camera on to another student, who was to film his or herself in the same manner. This process continued throughout the course of the school year, after which Dick and editor Matt Clarke reviewed the footage, narrowing the focus down to 16 students; Chain Camera was the result. The student's stories range from a drum major having problems with her boyfriend and a girl from Armenia whose parents only want her to date boys from her native land, to a recovering drug abuser who spent much of his childhood looking after his mother (who had a severe drinking problem), and a boy originally from Chicago whose parents moved him to the West Coast to get him out of the Windy City's street gangs. Produced for the premium cable network Cinemax, Chain Camera debuted at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.