Taking Teenage to the Web

2011-06-30

Teenage, winner of one of this year's TFI/Insurgent FellowshipsTFI/Insurgent Fellowshipsa book by Jon SavageTeenageTeenageFilm.com that both elaborates and expands on the film's themes. Below, Wolf tells us more about the site and how it fits in with his documentary.

I’m making a historical film about the invention of teenagers as we know them today. Between the first and second World Wars, there was intense generational conflict about the role of youth. In archival footage and stylized recreations, I show young types like Flappers, Jitterbugs, Nazi Youth and Bobby Soxers rebelling against their parents, and struggling to define the future on their own terms. Out of this intense conflict comes a new kind of person -- The Teenager -- a young person who is a consumer.

I’ve been developing the film for over a year, and have just completed archival research. We’ve sourced over 90 hours of material. From this amazing, super rare footage I’ve finalized the storyline with my collaborator, the British writer Jon Savage (who wrote the book Teenage is based on). Now we’re raising production financing and hoping to shoot recreations in the fall.

Although the premise of Teenage is to tell the “pre-history” of teenagers, I knew that this material would trigger more contemporary associations. I wanted to create a platform to explore and share those ideas and inspirations, so I decided to launch TeenageFilm.com.

For my previous film, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, I had a lot of success building an audience and fan-base online. I also recognized that there are now many “visual culture” blogs online, especially with the popularity of Tumblr. So I decided to launch a site that would publish daily up until the release of my film. I reached out to a talented blogger named Kelly Rakowski, who does a site called Nothing is New, which also publishes a lot of archival photography. Together we’re commissioning and generating content for the site.

The content Kelly and I publish on TeenageFilm.com is meant to focus more broadly on youth culture than the film (which only deals with youth pre-1950s). The site is driven by a lot of guest contributors, often focusing on their own teen years. We also have a new column by an amazing teenage drummer named Izzy from the band Care Bears on Fire. We’ll be publishing Izzy’s articles about teenagedom, including an interview with one of her idols Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.

The website has been a great creative outlet for me to explore a lot of tangential ideas that come from the research process. It’s also a fun opportunity to collaborate with other artists and writers. Some people have approached us to contribute, and others we’ve reached out to. But for the most part, the contributors are our good friends.

Over time the site will show some behind-the-scenes, making-of-Teenage updates, but I really see the website as a separate project. My hope is that people watch the teaser for the film online, and that we’re building awareness, so that by the time we’re premiering Teenage, people are already excited to see it.

Check out the site here.