In a dimly lit basement in a deserted house in the picturesque town of Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, nothing is quite as it seems. For a start, the white-faced zombies are only actors taking part in a key scene in the home-grown British horror film The Cellar Door. The set-piece severed hand too is just a well-placed prop, while the entire 21-person film crew, complete with camera and sound departments, make-up, wardrobe and effects, are in fact children. Film-makers, yes, but children all the same. The average age on The Cellar Door set is 10.
The recent story about a 10-year-old Indian cineaste called Kishan Shrikanth who was directing his film debut, Care of Footpath, was greeted with paternalistic good humour. And yet, as the local Cellar Door production illustrates, Shrikanth may not be such an aberration. For The Cellar Door is part of a series of pint-sized productions sponsored by First Light Movies, an exclusively kiddie-focused film initiative bankrolled by £1.1 million of lottery funds.
The initiative fosters film-making talent between the ages of 5 and 18, and First Light organises screenings and festivals, including an annual star-studded West End awards ceremony (last year’s judges included Jude Law and Stephen Fry). It’s also a chance, says First Light’s chief executive officer, Pip Eldridge, for the children involved to prove that they’ve got “an incredible grasp of the visual language of film, and can easily come up with creative ideas that are far better than most adults”.
It’s hard, Eldridge says, to alter public perceptions of children behind the camera as anything other than freakish oddities or novelty news stories. They’re either pre- pubescent Guinness record holders, such as the Dutch Sidney Ling, who was only 13 when he directed his first feature film, Lex the Wonder Dog, in 1973, or they’re established industry prodigies, such as Steven Spielberg, who repeatedly refers back to his adolescent 8mm productions as evidence of a predestined career path.
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The truth today, Eldridge says, is far more prosaic: “Most of the kids we see are just amazingly sophisticated when it comes to the film-making process. Because they’ve grown up with the internet, TV, film and digital, they’re completely au fait with the
technology and they can go through complicated visual ideas at an incredible speed. But in the UK we still have this view that kids should be seen and not heard, and they certainly shouldn’t be jumping around film sets.”
There are encouraging signs, however, of a revolution in moppet movie power around the globe. Hana Makhmalbaf, the latest critically adored auteur in the Iranian Makhmalbaf film dynasty, was only 10 when her first short film, The Day My Aunt Was Ill, was screened at the Locarno Film Festival. She was just 14 when her feature debut, Joy of Madness, premiered at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. She has since worked as an assistant director to the 37-year-old Iranian film-maker Marzieh Meshkini on the surreal Afghan road movie Stray Dogs (which opens here on March 17).
Makhmalbaf says that her age is her secret weapon. She says that unsuspecting subjects, from camera-shy women to imperious mullahs, allow her into their circle because they think that she’s “just a kid making a video”.
Similarly, the Miami-based child documentarian Chaille Stovall has become a veritable mini-me Michael Moore on the nonfiction film circuit because of his ability to get close to unsuspecting power players. He was 12 when he interviewed George W. Bush for his own election documentary, 2001’s Party Animals. The image of Bush staring bemusedly down at his diminutive interviewer was politically charged enough to thrust Stovall into the national spotlight. He has since interviewed the Dalai Lama for a documentary on Buddhism.
Elsewhere the popularity of Jonathan Caouette’s award-winning movie memoir Tarnation and Darren Stein’s amateur video collection Put the Camera on Me reveal the wider creative avenues stimulated by kids behind the camera.
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But it’s not all about a selfless creative revolution. The $158 billion (£90 billion) that is spent annually in America on products and services for under-18s is just waiting to be tapped by a child-friendly, child-focused industry.
It’s these sorts of figures, and in particular the increasing spending power of 8 to 14-year-old “tweenies”, that is driving child-friendly studios such as Disney and Nickelodeon into a kiddie-courting frenzy. The makers of everything from The Chronicles of Narnia to television shows such as Fifi and the Flowertots are in a “constant dialogue” with preteen focus groups and child consultants.
“Everything we do is kid-tested and kid-approved,” says Andy Goodhand, the head of research and planning at Nickelodeon UK, which has its sights set on the country’s £3 billion tweenie market. “The most important thing we do is get feedback from the kids,” he says. “The whole focus of this organisation is geared around the kids. Our brand positioning is: ‘If kids ruled the world’.”
In the meantime, before today’s children eventually rule the world, there are plenty of gruelling hours to be spent both on and off Shoreham film sets for budding cine-enthusiasts. All they ask, Eldridge says, is to be taken seriously. They’re not joking about what they do, so why should we? Although, she adds, stifling a giggle: “It’s really something to walk on to a film set and see an eight-year-old up a ladder shouting, ‘OK, now, move the camera a little to the right! Yes! Just right! That’s perfect!’ ”
Those crazy kids, eh?