1983 Directed by Joel DeMott, Jeff Kreines
In their final year at Muncie's Southside High School, a group of seniors hurtles toward maturity with a combination of joy, despair, and an aggravated sense of urgency. They are also learning a great deal about life, both in and out of school, and not what school officials think they are teaching.
From the Old Stuff From Fandor Collection:
The Mysteries of Muncie: In 1982, documentarian Peter Davis (Hearts and Minds) produced an expansive series of films for PBS. The “Middletown” Project was based on Robert and Helen Lynd’s groundbreaking micro-sociological studies of Muncie, Indiana, conducted in the 1910s and 20s. Davis and PBS commissioned a total of six films, each engaging with a different social institution (politics, religion, business, marriage, sports, and education) from a distinctly micro-sociological point of view. That is, the films explore the ways that individuals or small groups navigate these cultural formations, making personal or group decisions from which broader social conclusions may be drawn.
Taken as a whole, the Middletown films function a lot like a…
Wow. This was like if The Maysles Brothers directed an episode of Saved By the Bell.
Sort of THE DECLINE OF MUNCIE CIVILIZATION. Apparently pulled by PBS due to then-contversial content: middle-American teenagers doing unthinkable stuff like swearing, smoking pot, drinking and interracially dating. That last part is the most fascinating, as the kids constantly challenge each other's ideas about race, with of course the white boys completely furious, and the white girls not fully understanding not just their parents' unpleasant concerns but their black boyfriends' own anxieties, all compounded by some truly heinous stuff like little burning crosses being placed on neighborhood lawns.
Given the pre-reality-TV-saturation time period, it's downright amazing how these kids seem to just ignore the cameras constantly circling them. There's always a question of how much behavior is performative in a doc like this but the subjects here at least seem truly unselfconscious.
If I ever meet Joel DeMott I'm going to give her a big hug. Actually, I'll probably keep a safe distance and try not to stare. I had no idea what Demon Lover Diary was going to be upon first visit and the whole thing left a major impact on my video heart brain. More Demon Lover than Demon Lover, capturing demons and lovers - Magical ghost SOV Sorcery Realism the way only a Real SOV Sorceress could capture.
And then there's Seventeen, A Mid-Western Myth: Teenage Feelings and Joints Smoked. Moments realer than people, moving invisibly between home economics and burning crosses. Stealing kisses behind closed doors but not closed to the camera. This movie goes into teenage girls…
One of the most raw and intimate documentary ever, Seventeen tracks the lives and relationships of teenagers (and their families) in Muncie, Indiana in the early eighties.
It's hilarious in moments, scary in others, but entirely essential. Not only one of the most unflinching portrayals of teenagers ever, but one of the best films about the realities of race-relations in American in the early eighties.
Absolutely stunning.
"If I was going down, I'd want to go down with a tuxedo. A big blue one or something......In case somebody finds me, you know, digs me up one day. They'll think I'm rich or something."
Had Seventeen been a fictional film, it would be considered a must see classic. Instead, since it is a documentary, it is something better. Seventeen shows that real life is is just as full of drama and fantastic dialogue as any movie you can think of. The stuff that Seventeen captures on film is too amazing to even convey in this review. It is stuff that can't even fully be appreciated on a single viewing. For example, the luck/skill of capturing a shot of…
An intimate non-manipulative look into the lives of high school seniors, their friends, and family in Muncie, Indiana. Incredibly honest and almost unbelievable naturalistic, Seventeen is able to find the gripping in the mundane, while also serving up some surprising but welcome commentary on authority and class, as well as the state of race relations in small towns in the early 1980s (unsurprisingly not good).
Seventeen deals with some serious issues (racism and death) and it handles it well, but its biggest success is in capturing the vibe of the high school hang; Being huddled in a small bedroom with five other people, eating junk food, sneaking in beer, calling a local radio station and being elated when the song comes on. It's like you've been transported to the different smell of a friend's house, trying to figure out whether their parents are cool or not. In the midst of all this mudanity are sudden blasts of shit you're not able to deal with, you don't have the coping mechanisms yet, if you ever will; Dating someone you're not supposed to date, someone you like…
An amazingly raw and unguarded portrait of life as an American teen. The film is blistering with crude adolescent energy and is full of some of the most candid moments of humour and honesty ever captured in a film.
"Some of 'ems niggers, somes are black people, just like some peoples white trash and somes white"
Len's Mother
Viewed as part of my "Beware the Docs of March Marathon 1".
This two hour documentary following teenage life in Muncie, Indiana is probably a more profound social statement on inter race relations than the entire output of Spike Lee, John Singleton and Sidney Poitier rolled together.
It starts relatively simplistic, with typically rebellious teenagers acting up to the camera during various school lessons and while playing basketball & cheerleading. Then around 30 minutes in, the docu's filmmakers Joel DeMott & Jeff Kreines switch most of their attention on a promiscuous white chick named Len, and her turbulent on/off relationship with black basketball…
