Chain Camera is a 2001 American documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 directed by Kirby Dick

Kirby Dick

Kirby Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for directing documentary films. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith...

 about the lives of Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 students. It premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

.

Summary

Chain Camera is made up entirely of footage shot by students at John Marshall High School in Los Angeles. The filmmakers gave Hi-8 video cameras to ten students and asked them to record their lives for one week before passing the cameras on to ten new students. This process continued throughout the school year, and the filmmakers then selected 16 student video diaries for the film.

The film's subjects represent diverse backgrounds in terms of race, religion, socio-economic background, gender, and sexual orientation. Most segments feature scenes of the students interacting with friends and family members as well as personal video diaries in which the subjects analyze their lives. Dick has stated that he didn't censor any of the students' footage except in situations that might violate child pornography laws, such as a scene in which a teenager performs a simulated sex act using a banana.

Chain Camera subjects encounter a variety of different situations and discuss how these have affected their lives. Topics include eating disorders, running away from home

Runaway youth

A runaway is a minor or a person under an arbitrary age, depending upon the local jurisdiction, who has left the home of his or her parent or legal guardian without permission, or has been thrown out by his or her parent and is considered by the local authorities to lack the capacity to live under...

, suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

, backyard wrestling

Backyard wrestling

Backyard wrestling , and also referred to as yarding or backyarding is a controversial underground recreation based on the usually untrained practice of professional-style wrestling in a typically low budget environment between predominantly 12 to 30 year old males. Some practitioners have attended...

, racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

, nationality

Nationality

Nationality is membership of a nation or sovereign state, usually determined by their citizenship, but sometimes by ethnicity or place of residence, or based on their sense of national identity....

, sexuality

Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...

, family

Family

In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...

, AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, alcoholism

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

, political activism, and graffiti art.

Reception

Critics praised the film for its honesty and the diversity of its student subjects. Scott Tobias of AV Club said, "By turns playful, harrowing, intensely moving, and uproariously funny, Chain Camera cuts away all documentary artifice and goes straight to the source, allowing these kids to reveal themselves with the utmost directness and candor." Several critics also made favorable comparisons to Michael Apted

Michael Apted

Michael David Apted, CMG is an English director, producer, writer and actor. He is one of the most prolific British film directors of his generation but is best known for his work on the Up Series of documentaries and the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.On 29 June 2003 he was elected...

's Up series, which has chronicled the lives of several Britons over the course of several decades. Dick has acknowledged Apted's influence and has stated that he plans to follow the Up paradigm by making a sequel film that documents Chain Camera's subjects as adults.