|
|
| |
|
| |
GIRLS ABOUT TWELVE |
| |
editing by Kersti Grunditz during fall 2010
PREMIÈRE in february 2011. |
| |
|
| |
Girls about twelve is a meditation on one of life’s turning-points, one of both physical and emotional frustration.
“When you get to around twelve it feels as if you’re right on the border between grown-up and child. Sometimes I think, do I want to play with dolls? Or do I want to hang out in town with my friends?” /Amanda, 12 years old
Girls around twelve is a film about a time of great change. We follow seventeen girls who are on tour with a show they’ve staged themselves, a show about being twelve years old. The girls speak openly about the transition from girl to woman. They tell us that the changing room is the worst. The girls are all fixated on their bodies and anxious about who’s got “it” yet . The transition from girl to woman can be amazing, but also a source of much frustration. In Girls around twelve we learn what it’s like to be the first or last to start developing physically. Being in the middle isn’t hard. That’s where everyone wants to be, in the middle. Except for some, who dare go their own way.
The director’s vision
Becoming a teenager is a time of great change. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Mette, Lovisa and Linnea L are three girls who represent the range of experience of this period of time in a girl’s life. You shouldn’t stand out in a crowd, not draw too much attention to yourself. Middle-of-the-road is best. The film is about girls who are in a phase of confusion in their lives. The film literally moves from the innocently playful to the dead serious. When I interviewed these girls I was struck by what big plans for life they had. To them, the world is all opportunities, there are no limits. They live in a world where they socialize and travel boundlessly in cyberspace. When I was thirteen I read girls’ magazines and watched Fame on TV, and the world out there was far away. I saw my friends at someone’s house or at the youth centre. Then we went home, and maybe later we would speak on the phone. These girls also meet at someone’s house or at the youth centre but they’re never really separated. They’re connected all the time. E-mail, SMS, MMS and chat. They constantly update each other on where they are, with whom, where they’re going and how they feel. There is no private sphere. They are independent and confident, yet still so fragile and reliant on the group’s approval. Girls around twelve are in their own subjective world, completely engrossed in the transition from girl to woman. |
| |
|
| |
|
|
