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DVD TALK
"'Chain Camera' is a successful experiment that only provides a glimpse of different lives, yet the whole gives us a moving and engaging look at what many of today's young people experience. The DVD offers fine audio/video quality and a lot of very enjoyable supplements. Recommended."

DVD VERDICT
"We do not envy the challenge director Kirby Dick and his team must have faced in the editing room for this project. An estimated eight hours a day times seven days in a week equals 56 hours of footage. Multiplied by 4,192 students, that leaves 234,752 hours of raw material. That's around 9,700 days of footage—26 years' worth. That they were somehow able to turn all this into a movie is amazing. That it's a pretty good movie is even more amazing."

MOVIE FREAK

"Chain Camera is an involving and refreshing look at teenagers in their senior year in high school. The extras are quite nice, and therefore I’m recommending this DVD."


FILM FORWARD
"The four to six minutes devoted to each teen feel hardly enough; these students are so engrossing that one wishes to see more. The filmmakers are skilled in finding a moment of uncertainty and doubt in each student's footage that takes the viewer right back to their own high school days. The final chapters record the school's prom as well as graduation, in which the valedictorian gives a riveting and surprising speech. Forget the current media's obsession with the rich and the famous - Chain Camera exposes the real fiber of 21st century America."

 SPOKANE 7
"How can you resist a film that takes you into the lives of teenagers, especially when those teens are defining themselves? "Chain Camera," which debuted at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, does that. Director Kirby Dick gave video cameras to dozens of teenagers from the senior class of Los Angeles' John Marshall High School, told them to shoot their lives and then pass the camera on to others. Dick ended up using the work of 16 students, giving us a chance to see them up close and personal and on their own terms. It's an irresistible concept"
     

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THE NEW YORK TIMES
'Sensitive, insightful, romantic, wounded, angry, yearning, uncertain, fragile and frivolous, these youngsters at a Los Angeles school videotaped themselves in 1999 to render the raw materials for Mr. Dick's mosaic.'

LA WEEKLY
'By turns funny and heartbreaking, the film is also profoundly personal.'

LA WEEKLY - SUNDANCE ROUNDUP
'...a hilarious, unnerving and remarkably intimate inside portrait of adolescent life that lends vigorous new meaning to the term 'teen movie.'

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
'...an irresistible combination of candor, humor, vulnerability and attitude.'

THE NEW YORK POST
'A fascinating snapshot of contemporary teenagers.'

VARIETY
'Engaging...the raw flipside of TV teen tracts such as 'Beverly Hills, 90210' and 'Dawson's Creek'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
'Casually, compellingly real and exciting...'

THE GUARDIAN - UK
'Chain Camera bursts with youthful optimism and dazzling personalities.'

THE NEW TIMES
'Chain Camera lands its considerable impact not with fancy cinematography or careful staging but with the unexpected twists of real life.'

THE BOSTON PHOENIX
'The insecurity, self-realization, and open wounds come across like a bracing slap to the face, thanks to the select 16's ease in front of the camera and their desperate desire to be heard. It's hard not to listen.'

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY
'...a remarkably spontaneous piece of 'reality' filmmaking that single-handedly opens up new vistas in the world of documentary filmmaking.'

FILM THREAT
'We get to witness these 16 kids as they struggle with bulimia, poverty, racial tensions, homosexuality, drugs, politics, loneliness, non-existent self-esteem and pretty much anything else you can think of.'

BOX OFFICE MAGAZINE
'...a portrait that is funny, thoughtful, and most importantly, real.'

WIRED
'Chain Camera is at times screamingly funny...and at others heartbreaking.'

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