four star teens, one vision
Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary
A touching new documentary tracks the journey of entrants in the 2007 Junior Eurovision Song Contest
Eurovision. The brand alone conjures up images of mind-boggling multi-lingual showstoppers, gaudy costumes and extravagant choreography. For some, Eurovision represents a display of national pride and for others, it evokes the cultural cringe.
Take the same talent quest concept, imagine the contestants in pint-sized packages, double the ambition, and minus the cynicism - now you have the Junior Eurovision Song Contest!
Since 2003, tweens to teens have muscled in on the annual pop contest that lays claim to generating the European Union's original 'Idols'. In only five years, the junior contest has attracted 23 million viewers across 17 countries, and sifts through an initial 14,000 contestants all chasing one dream.
For the 2007 competition a 32-year-old British documentary maker, Jamie Jay Johnson, set out to bottle the pure enthusiasm, compelling performances and the heart-warming personal stories of contestants though his debut feature documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary.
With a skeletal crew (often just Johnson as the cameraman accompanied by a sound recordist) Johnson captured the trajectory of four finalists (and a host of other characters along the way), all creative under 16 year-olds who in order to vie for stardom must write and perform their own songs, wowing millions of voting viewers in a live telecast in front of a 6000-strong audience in Rotterdam.
Johnson takes us into their lives in the final stages of the competition, unleashing a series of genuinely moving accounts not even he was expecting. He told the London Times earlier this year, "It's like, you're their friend, their therapist, their brother and their dad...you become all these different things.There were a couple of occasions when I shed a tear or two behind the camera, like when Marina talks about her dad leaving, or when Eliana says she'd never felt such happiness as when Giorgos won the Cyprus final...she said it with the sort of purity and innocence I can't even remember having."
This is Johnson's first feature film. The director cut his teeth with shorter documentaries and a television series for Britain's Channel 4, Holiday Around My Bedroom, which earnt him a BAFTA nomination for Best New Director in 2004. It was only after this success that Johnson decided to go to film school.
Sounds Like Teen Spirit had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and has enjoyed theatrical screenings across the UK and Europe. It premieres at ACMI on Thursday 30 April and is one of four music documentaries screening in May as part of ACMIs First Look program. For more information on the April / May program, click here
Published Thursday, 23 April 2009
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