Living With Tourettes & Other Short Stories

Squirreled away in the early morning on Channel 4 is a series of fascinating documentaries made by teenagers, dealing with challenging conditions that beset their lives. Spearheaded by Mediabox, which aims to “enable young people to create media projects”, there is a moral centre to these collection of short films that lifts them above the similar “3 Minute x” project screened after the news in the evening on the same channel.

There is certainly a youthful enthusiasm to the project, though the brief running times limit the subject matter into a sound bite style which never really gets under the skin of the condition that is being focused on, yet the argument could be that the target audience’s attention span is similarly limited.

“Conditions” is the opening film, in which teenage Jordon waxes lyrical on his dual struggles with ADHD and Tourettes Syndrome, and whilst neither issue particularly seems too severe, the ebullience of his determination is a picture of teenage rebellion encapsulated. “How To Grieve” is one of the films you wish could be developed upon further, as teenagers discuss their shared experiences of the death of a parent. “Ten Years” is more insular, though no less moving, in that it measures the impact of the loss of an inspirational mother from breast cancer.

“It’s My Life” is a rougher cinema verite look at the life of a young girl on dialysis, as she waxes matter-of-factly about the tube that is run through her neck weekly in order to manage her condition, while “Here And Now” focuses on a young Muslim Politics student who has moved away from home to University and how she handles the seismic changes. “Coming Home” focuses on gay parenting, though suffers from poor sound recording issues. Finally, “G33K” is the most experimental and unfortunately the poorest, as it suffers severe synching issues and isn’t a particularly interesting topic.

Fortunately things rarely descend into the “disease of the week” sob story, which you could be forgiven to thinking such tales may portend, and the autonomy of the young directors ensure that the focus is very much in a positive vein.



Airs at 9:55am on Friday 15th May 2009 on Channel 4.

Written by Simon Cole.