Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan & Dawn Valadez
2008, 86 minutes
Going on 13 will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival April 23–May 4 2008 in New York City.
About the Film
From Tweety Bird to Bow Wow, double dutch to chatrooms, Daddy’s girls to first deceptions, watch as Ariana, Isha, Rosie, and Esme let go of childhood and fumble—or sprint—toward an uncertain future. This is puberty and for each of these girls of color, it’s a whirlwind of change and new choices. Without flinching, Going on 13 enters their world as they negotiate the precious, precarious moments between being a little girl and becoming a young woman.
Four years with four girls in California’s Bay Area. Meet Esmeralda (Esme), Mexican-American, first to complete her daily schoolwork and also first in her class to have a “boyfriend” without her parents’ knowledge; Ariana, African-American, who transforms from a tomboy into one of the “popular girls” as her family struggles to leave the poverty of West Oakland; Rosie, mixed race Latina, who, at nine, is precocious and sunny, but grows into an alienated pre-teen who may have to repeat the sixth grade due to chronic truancy; and Isha, an immigrant from India, who despite her devotion to her traditional family, explores Internet teen chatrooms with user names like “ghetto girl” and “cutie pie.”
Director’s Statement
If there were any rules about documentary filmmaking, we probably broke them all.
One social worker, one filmmaker, and one very ambitious idea: to follow girls over the course of four years as they became teenagers. Knowing that production alone would take so many years, we decided two things: one, we would have to pace ourselves; two, we would be making it up as we went along. This included a shooting schedule that allowed us to keep our day jobs, becoming very close to our “subjects,” and leaving the confines of a strictly observational cinema to either chat, hang out, or answer the girls’ own questions about growing up.
Some things never change. We all go through puberty. We all emerge transformed. These are the universals.
But we wondered what life is like, today, for girls like us. Girls from the city, from immigrant and multiethnic families, girls who grew up with step-parents and within extended families. These are girls with whom we can relate and yet their world is a much different place.
There are many films about teenage girls, but few films follow them through puberty. And biological changes are only one part of this transformation. There is a whole world of emotional, cultural, and social relationships that girls experience. It’s an intense period. We wanted to capture that and ask, “How do girls separate themselves from their parents and develop their own identity? How does this happen within today’s complex social and cultural context?”
About the Filmmakers
Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Director/Producer
Kristy picked up her first Super-8 camera in middle school and hasn’t put the camera down since. She has produced and directed a number of short films, including El Corrido de Cecilia Rios, a documentary that chronicles the violent death of fifteen-year-old Cecilia Rios. The film won the Golden Spire Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival, and was subsequently licensed by the Sundance Channel. Since graduating with an MFA in Film Production from San Francisco State University, Kristy has worked as a filmmaker, an arts educator, and a film and video editor. She has served on the board of directors of the documentary film distributor New Day Films and is an active and enthusiastic participant in the Bay Area’s diverse filmmaking community. Going on 13 is her first feature-length film.
Dawn Valadez, Producer/Director
Dawn believes that feminism is a dirty word and she loves dirty words. As a Chicana feminist, she has worked with children and youth struggling to stay sane despite the insanity of the adults around them, with young people wanting to make a difference in the world and with families, and hard working people, trying to make ends meet. She believes that the media must be taken back—freed from faceless, nameless corporate interests. She has collaboratively built public art and installations with youth, hosted conferences on community service, and trained thousands of people. For over twenty years, she’s worked on the front lines of social services and now sees the wisdom of producing media about the people she has lived with and served. She’s been married for over seventeen years and has a pre-teen son and two silly rescued pitbull-mix dogs. In addition to producing this film, she raises resources, including money, for a non-profit that serves working poor people.
Click here to read an interview with Dawn Valadez, Co-Director of Going on 13
