Here’s Looking At You, Kids

Artists discover the Documentation Generation. But can we trust what they see?

Jennie Yabroff
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 12:25 PM ET Mar 15, 2008

When filmmaker Caroline Suh decided to make a documentary about the student-council election at New York's Stuyvesant High School, she was concerned about how the kids would react to the camera. It's an understandable fear: for those of us of Suh's age—she's 37—and older, the introduction of a movie camera has traditionally turned people into either hams mouthing 'Hi, Mom!' or zombies frozen stiff with anxiety. "When I was in high school, if someone was making a film, it would have been this glamorous, exciting thing," Suh says. Turns out she needn't have worried. During the year Suh spent making "Frontrunners," two other journalists were also documenting Stuyvesant's kids: one for a book about the school's academic pressures, another for a magazine cover story on the sexual mores of contemporary youth. And the kids, Suh says, were unfazed by the scrutiny. "They've all seen reality TV. They make movies with their cell phones," she says. "Being under the microscope is just part of their lives."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/123484/output/print