ABSTRACT
The UK has been at the forefront of support for and developments in youth filmmaking. This chapter discusses the history of youth filmmaking in the UK and analyses in detail some of the central discourses that underpin youth filmmaking as an educational intervention. It utilizes empirical case studies to show that youth filmmaking is justified in one of three ways: enabling young people to feel a sense of belonging to physical and virtual communities; giving young people the opportunity to 'express themselves' as civic participants; and giving young people essential technical and communicative skills for the future. The chapter aims to examine how the discourses produce images of youth that are problematic both in terms of positioning youth as 'deficit' and as naturally 'creative' and show how abstract discourses relate to the on-the-ground practice of youth filmmaking.
