Answering the questions you didn’t know you had about how your parent’s parents, and for that matter, your grandparent’s parents were like when they were in their adolescence, Matt Wolf’s (Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell) docu-essay narrative film was one of the better items to be found in a paltry sampling of films I caught at this year’s Tribeca Film Fest edition. Teenage has found a taker in Oscilloscope Laboratories, who’ve picked up the film targeting more festival play and a 2014 release.
Gist: Before the ‘Teenager’ was invented, there was no second stage of life. You were either a child or you went to work as an adult. At the turn of the century, child labor was ending, ‘adolescence’ was emerging, and a struggle erupted between adults and youth. Would the young be controlled and regimented, or could they be free? Inspired by punk author Jon Savage’s book, Teenage gives voice to young people from the first half of the 20th century in America, England, and Germany—from party-crazed Flappers and hip Swing Kids to zealous Nazi Youth and frenzied Sub-Debs. By the end of World War II, they were all ‘Teenagers’: a new idea of youth.
Worth Noting: Thesps Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Julia Hummer, Jessie Usher in contributed in the narration department, while Jason Schwartzman was on board as an executive producer.
Do We Care?: Surprisingly lyrical, Variety called it a “feat of both editing and blurring-of-the-edges nonfiction technique, Matt Wolf’s mesmerizing, scrapbook-style “Teenage” conveys the transition in how the world perceived this emerging in-between stage via a series of first-person portraits of exceptional individuals set amid a whirlwind of vintage footage.”
