Chain Camera

Original and candid, this documentary represents our multi-cultural environment. Light in concept, it reaches many depths. The students make the most out of the notion of passing around video cameras to document their lives. The film touches on just about every issue teenagers have to deal with in today's world. It's multi-dimensional regarding gender, race and class. The kids are funny, totally honest and very real. The filmmakers respect their subjects and never trivialize their issues. This is the face of the world. The audience applauded at the end of the screening. Chain Camera is both riveting and heartwarming. You can't help but become involved with the subjects. Fantastic!

Finally a REAL "reality" show! One Marshall High School student (in Los Angeles) is given a camera and a week to film their life then pass the camera on to a classmate. The resulting 10 vignettes create a compelling reality documentary. It is 100% human, thus it is often loving and compassionate, sometimes chilling, and sometimes extremely funny. The audience applauded loudly at the end. It makes one realize how phony the current "reality TV show" rage is.

Don't be fooled by the lackluster movie poster, Chain Camera is a very entertaining and eye opening movie. Unlike films like Kids and Gummo amongst others that allege to have the inside scoop on the lives of America's youth, Chain Camera actually does "tell it like it is" so to speak. The film is presented in 6 minute segments devoted to a particular student at the school. As the film progresses each student unfolds emotionally leading to funny and dramatic moments. The director should have made use of digital video cameras as it tends to be very grainy at times but perhaps that would have driven production costs up. Once again coming back to the film itself, you must approach it with an open mind as the students come from VERY diverse backgrounds. Topics such as racism, fellatio, and drugs are comically touched upon so please do not bring children under 13, please its embarrassing.

Aside from that Chain Camera is a fun little sad, funny, and above all interesting documentary that is a must see for anyone living in America today and yes it this is reality unlike Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson Creek, or the other junk on television.

...this one just isn't worth the cost of a movie ticket. What these filmmakers have done cannot properly be called filmmaking; rather, they just chose sixteen students of some diversity (though not quite as much diversity as the reviews have suggested) and set them loose. The results are, to be brutally frank, far more often boring, self-indulgent, overwrought and off-puttingly grainy than truly insightful.

There are, of course, moments of recognition and identification of the sort only possible in documentary film, but overall there's not much more truth here than in "Bully" or, for that matter, a decent TV documentary of the same sort. Though full of talk about sex and sexual diversity and racism, the film brings nothing to the table that will be of use to anyone who has thought about any of these issues with any seriousness. And while certain segments serve absolutely no purpose other than to inject a bit of (admittedly welcome) comic relief, most often the five-minute limit keeps up from becoming emotionally involved with any of the students. An interesting idea, but thumbs down for CHAIN CAMERA.

this out-standing documentary will probably never be seen by a large audience which is truly unfortunate. it is riveting, touching, sad, hysterical, and unforgettable in every way. it follows east los angeles high-school students for a short time in each of their lives after which time they pass the camera on to another person, thus the name of the movie. what makes it so special is that almost every stereotype you might have about kids in this tough neighborhood is proven false. you get to see the person behind the statistic and it makes you re-evaluate yourself and your perceptions of others. i hope that this film eventually makes it to video. it will be one that i want