Seven Up! (1964)

Documentary. A number (twenty, it is said at some point, I didn't count) of seven-year-old British children from varying socioeconomic backgrounds are brought together during one day of leisure. They go to the zoo and other places. They are also interviewed.

This is the first installment of a series of films featuring the same persons, and made at intervals of seven years; in the latest film to date the subjects are 56, I think. In this first installment, the narration and questioning of the children reflect the transitional ideology of the 1960s, and embody the adult's viewpoint of the world. These children are simply viewed as adult prototypes, not as children. The fact that they are children shows of course in their answers, and the result is sometimes quite funny; sometimes you can see they were coached by their parents, and that is funny too. In those days the U.K. was not nearly as multicultural and multiracial as it is today, but the mindframe was already shifting, as evidenced by the question about how the children feel about persons of color; it is obvious from the answers that then this was exclusively a concern of adults (and, I speculate, of few of them). An enigmatic moment arises when, after this question is posed to some white kids and they answer it, the scene shifts to a different place and, without explicitly showing the question, we see another interviewee, a mixed-race kid, say that "they are pretty much like myself" (quoted from memory).