24 Girls

In 24 Girls, viewers watch a melange of girls dancing, singing, doing somersaults, performing monologues, and reading poetry (including a young girl with a pronounced lisp reciting a poem about swimming on a silver lake), while the camera moves in and out of focus, uses home movie footage, slow motion, echo chamber sound--basically the entire film-o-matic bag of goodies. Juxtaposed against these "auditions," the filmmaker includes a running commentary about a classmate in grade school who died in a car crash. Worth noting is the music, beautifully arranged, composed and performed by Peter Whitehead and featuring the Ronkin Family in a wonderful quasi-Celtic Russian style. So, is this self absorbed ephemeral nonsense or a masterpiece? In this particular case, the video doesn't propel the viewer into thinking in a different way or tell us anything new about adolescence (yes, it's still an awkward and self-conscious period). In short, this may fill an off-beat niche for university libraries (i.e., "Art Videos--Adolescence--Female"), but is not a necessary purchase. Aud: C, P. (N. Plympton)