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Seventeen (1983 film)
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Wikipedia article
'Seventeen' is a documentary film directed by Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines. It is a film about coming of age in working class America.
It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival.[https://vimeo.com/156184990 Underground USA: SEVENTEEN on Vimeo]
Critical reception
Vincent Canby of 'The New York Times' called 'Seventeen', "one of the best and most scarifying reports on American life to be seen on a theater screen." In a later piece he added "It's Seventeen that haunts the memory. It has the characters and the language as well as the vitality and honesty that are the material of the best fiction. Ferociously provocative."
Michael Sragow, writing in 'The New Yorker', said: "Working with lightweight camera rigs they developed themselves, Jeff Kreines and Joel DeMott (who, despite the name, is female) approach the subjects of their documentary working-class teenagers in Muncie, Indiana man-to-man and woman-to-woman. The immediacy is refreshing, and shocking. As searing as it is rambunctious, this film brings out all the middle-class prejudices against the working class that American movies rarely confront."
Johnny Ray Huston, writing in 'SF360' and 'Indiewire', said "One thing is for sure: 'Seventeen' is without a doubt one of the greatest movies, perhaps the greatest, about teenage life (not to mention American life) ever made."
Ira Glass, host of 'This American Life', said it was "the most amazing reporting on a high school that I had ever seen. It's called 'Seventeen' and it was directed by a couple, a woman named Joel DeMott and a man named Jeff Kreines. It was made in 1983, filmed at Southside High School in Muncie, Indiana. It's just this incredible document. It's so real and just one amazing moment after another."
Accolades
'Seventeen' was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the field of documentary at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival, where the jurors were Barbara Kopple, D. A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wiseman.
See also
*Working class culture
*Coming of age
*1985 in film
References
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