We Were Once Kids – cphdox

/we-were-once-kids

  • We Were Once Kids - Trailer
    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8b9ke5

    The cult film ‘Kids’ was a scandalous succes in 1995. But the semi-documentary about young, sex-crazed skaters in New York had big consequences for the cast, who finally speak out 25 years later.

    In 1995, everyone was talking about ‘Kids’. Larry Clarke’s semi-documentary about a group of young skaters in New York was an international scandal and a massive success, nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and causing a furore for its transgressive portrayal of teenage sex, violence and drugs. 25 years later, the cast tell their own version of the story, and it’s not pretty. ‘We Were Once Kids’ is a tale of solidarity, delusion and exploitation. The young people were cast on the street for a film where few in the audience could tell reality from fiction. And once the film hit, it was too late to draw the lines.
    https://cphdox.dk/film/we-were-once-kids

    #larry_clark #heroin_chic #addiction #jeunes #cinema

    • W e Were Once Kids addresses the still tender and painful heart of the 1995 film’s aftermath, the deaths of Pierce and Hunter, who could be understood as best embodying the ethos portrayed in Kids. It conveys the difficulties that both of them, like other cast members, faced after the movie had been released: struggling with addiction and alcoholism while facing the challenge of maintaining authenticity after being made into an image, and navigating what must have felt like a make-believe world.

      https://www.artforum.com/print/202209/lila-lee-morrison-on-kids-and-the-surplus-of-the-image-89462

    • tiens c’est Disney qui a distribué Kids :
      https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/24/style/IHT-kids-grabs-spotlight-at-cannes.html

      Ce qui a permis à Clark d’assurer que personne ne s’est vraiment drogué sur le tournage, et que tout les kids du film sont plus vieux que ce qu’ils ont l’air à l’écran.

      The director claimed that the kids on screen were older than they looked, and that none were doing drugs.He even got in a pitch for Disney, the distributor.

      J’ai tout de même littéralement adoré Whassup rockers à l’époque. Faudrait que je le revois.

      Ce qui est dingue c’est d’avoir aimé à ce point la vision de Clark sur les gamins. ça me fait beaucoup (re)penser à cette citation de Dworkin :

      « Parce que la plupart des adultes mentent aux enfants la plupart du temps, l’adulte pédophilique semble honnête, quelqu’un qui dit la vérité, le seul adulte justement, prêt à découvrir le monde et à ne pas mentir. »

      Un exemple :

      “Larry doesn’t do kids the way other people do,” said Fitzpatrick. “Larry knew early on that to make a film like this he needed to be on the inside of this sort of counterculture.” So at 50 years old Clark taught himself how to skateboard and hung around Washington Square Park everyday getting to know the kids. In Fitzpatrick’s opinion, that time commitment was absolutely necessary, because “teenagers don’t trust adults”, and it was the only way Clark could convince the skaters to take part in his film. “He knew that to get respect from these kids he would have to give them respect,” said Fitzpatrick. “Larry gave them respect and they trusted him to tell their story.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/22/harmony-korine-kids-20th-anniversary

    • Peu ont montré avec autant de réalisme le quotidien d’une certaine jeunesse
      Dans une interview pour le Guardian, Larry Clark a dit que le plus beau compliment qu’il n’ait jamais reçu venait d’un garçon qui a défini Kids en ces termes : ’’Ce n’était pas comme un film. C’était comme dans la vraie vie.’’

    • Tiens ils ont parlé du doc dans el pais :

      https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-07-14/kids-the-indie-movie-sensation-with-a-darker-side.html

      In 2021, #Hamilton_harris – one of the boys featured in the film – participated in a documentary titled We were once kids, directed by Eddie Martin. Harris pursued this project after becoming alarmed when he discovered that a large part of the movie’s viewership mistakenly believed that they were watching a documentary.

      “My feelings towards the movie started to change after seeing the global reaction it got,” he told Variety. At the same time, he felt that the creators outside the group – Korine and director Larry Clark – failed to capture the strong sense of community that the teenagers had created. While the film reduced the existence of its protagonists to a devastating nihilism, the truth is that those kids – who used skateboarding as an outlet – had formed a family. They were protecting each other, escaping from homes where drug usage and violence were common. Carefree sex was not at the center of their lives: in fact, many of the protagonists were virgins.

      (...)

      The problematic part came with the female roles. When the women in the gang read the script, they refused to participate. It did not reflect the relationship of camaraderie that united them: it was simply a festival of sex and drugs, a film “about rape and misogyny” says Priscilla Forsyth, who ended up participating in a minor role with only one sentence for posterity (“I’ve fucked and I love to fuck”). On the other hand, the boys could be of non-normative beauty, but the girls chosen to star in the film included 15-year-old Rosario Dawson – whom Korine discovered in a social housing project where she lived with her grandmother – and Chlöe Sevigny, a New York club regular who, after being featured in two fashion editorials and a Sonic Youth video, had become the city’s great underground sensation.

      (...)

      The director of We were once kids does not point to a culprit, but hints that many powerful people made a fortune while the protagonists were exposed to the world with their allegedly amoral lifestyle.

    • On parlait de cette divergence, en 2015, dans le guardian :

      https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/19/kids-film-larry-clark-skateboarding-culture-new-york-east-coast-supreme

      High says the added storyline was a distortion: “The true story [of Kids] is about a bunch of kids who grew up with literally nothing,” she says. “We might have been from different areas and different races but we came from the same income bracket of broke. We learned how to take care of each other at a time that was one of the rougher periods in New York City’s history.

      “The film portrays segregation between girls and guys, which wasn’t reality. The main point [of the film] – the whole virgin-fucking, misogynistic thing – was not necessarily how we lived our lives.”

      (...)

      To Harris, the group was ahead of its time in a country mired in racism and recession. Intuitively post-racial in a colour-conscious society, the crew formed its own world around skateboarding despite being tethered to a socioeconomic bracket that deemed it invisible

      .

      Le sujet du film aurait pu être ça :

      “In the early 90s we were dealing with crack, the Aids epidemic, racism and all kinds of social injustices. We were totally aware of the social dynamic in the world around us. We were constantly trying to change that, and foster that change as an example,” he said

      En terme de révolution, une toute autre paire de manche...

    • (déso je spam un peu)

      Cette #ruse, de faire passer sa vision des choses pour des #preuves.

      https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/jun/25/larry-clark-t-shirts-dressing-young-teenagers

      Still, he rejects claims that his previous work is either exploitative or luridly voyeuristic: "I would go to these parties and see fucking, gangbanging and drugs. To me it’s historical evidence. I can only shoot what I see.

      “Back then it was a secret world but you know what? Kids was based on reality. That’s what these kids on the street tell me, they say: ’Larry that’s how it is.’ Personally, I feel there’s the argument that if it’s not documented, how would we know it’s going on at all?”