TEEN DREAMS
A film review by James Berardinelli
Copyright 1995 James Berardinelli
RATING (0 TO 10): 8.4
Shown at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema Running Length: 1:10 MPAA Classification: Not Rated (Mature themes, profanity, violence)
Feaaturing: Frank Cardon, Adawna, La Traun Parker Directors: Frank Cardon, Adawna, La Traun Parker Producers: Ilan Ziv and Peter Kinoy Cinematography: the directors Distribution unknown
Alongside HOOP DREAMS, this is one of the best documentaries I've seen chronicling the difficulties of coming of age in the inner city amidst pervasive violence, drug use, and prostitution. Directors Frank Cardon, Adawna, and La Traun Parker were given hi-8 video cameras and asked to record the events of their lives over an eight-month period. The results of these taped diaries are at times shocking, often moving, and always gripping. It's one thing for a professional film maker to come into a situation and document what's happening; it's something entirely different for one of the participants to do so. TEEN DREAMS' greatest strength is its perspective.
Taped on the streets of North Philadelphia, Frank Cardon's segment is an examination of teen-on-teen violence and the emotions that lead to such explosive bloodlettings. Frank takes us inside his own mind and allows us to see the hatred, fear, and anger lurking there. "Hate," he says, "allows you to survive." There is an omnipresent frustration on the part of those living in the inner city that they can't have what the people in the suburbs have, and this gives birth to a need to lash out at something. But Frank's story is not without optimism. He believes the people in his neighborhood will eventually band together to fight their oppressors rather than each other.
Adawna and her sister Gloria are two young teens living on Hollywood Boulevard. While their world isn't the same grim place of violence that Frank's is, they would surely understand his feelings. Adawna grew up in Arkansas, where her family still resides, but she fled home at an early age to escape life-threatening abuse by her father. Now, walking the streets, she understands the pressures of loneliness and isolation. Money is scarce, and the temptation is always there to sell her body for a bite to eat. In Adawna's case, there's no time for dreams of the future. She's just trying to survive the present.
La Traun's story is the most upbeat. He's a high school graduate living in Harlem with a single mom. He intends to go to college, but first, he wants to visit South Carolina to locate his father, who he hasn't seen for years. His father and mother split because of his dad's drug use, and La Traun wonders if his long-lost parent still cares for him. His trek takes him to the place of his paternal family's roots, and gives him a new perspective on a man he never really understood. La Traun says the experience represented a maturing process which helped him to realize that "life is good."
TEEN DREAMS successfully accomplishes what it sets out to do: give an unclouded, uncompromising view of some of the difficulties and challenges faced by youths growing up in less-than-privileged conditions. It is a stirring triple portrait, and we come to understand Frank, Adawna, and La Traun through their own words and thoughts. Without the filter of a professional film maker, there is a starkness to this work which is often missing from other, similarly-themed documentaries. If change can begin only through understanding, then TEEN DREAMS is a powerful first step in the process.
- James Berardinelli (jberardinell@delphi.com)
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