I Am Eleven DVD Launch
Turns out 11-year-olds are fascinating fodder for documentary filmmaking.
Overview
Eleven is a peculiar age: no longer rugrats, not quite teenagers (but please don’t call them tweens), today 11-year-olds are privy to more knowledge and information than any generation before them, incidentally making them fascinating fodder for documentary filmmaking.
In 2005 Melbourne director Genevieve Bailey embarked on a six-year journey that spanned 15 countries on a mission to capture something of the lives of 11-year-olds around the world. The fruit of her labour is the now internationally acclaimed cinematic portrait of adolescence that is I Am Eleven, which since opening at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2011 has screened in the US, UK, Brazil, France, Sweden, Canada and Spain, winning numerous awards along the way.
At once cute, hilarious, deeply touching, intriguing and heartbreaking, Bailey's film transports the viewer back to a time in life when romance looked like a Disney movie, becoming an adult was marked by "your voice changing" and anything seemed possible. Kids say the darndest things.
To celebrate the launch of the DVD, Genevieve Bailey will be joined by some of the now nearly full-grown cast of I Am Eleven for a discussion at Readings Carlton this Wednesday. We can only hope little French genius Remi will be there and is still single.
Image credit I Am Eleven.
