It was a simple but immensely effective idea: supply students at LA’s multi-ethnic John Marshall High School with video cameras and allow them to make mini-movies documenting their lives. After a week of shooting, they passed the cameras on to other students. Lots of video bios four to six minutes in length resulted, and the most enticing of them, 16 in all, were seamed together by supervising professional filmmaker Kirby Dick (Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Super-Masochist and Derrida) into a sympathetic, endearing, sometimes deeply moving 90-minute work.

Virtually all the choices are good ones, and everyone watching will have his/her personal favorites. I loved a film showing a once legally blind boy who recently has gained his sight but who now finds himself, an admitted virgin, shy when girls ask him on dates. Two shorts featuring out-of-the-closet gay and lesbian students are inspiring for their courage, and there’s a hilariously raunchy girl-guy collaboration in which the girl’s hilarious laughter keeps stopping her from going down on a banana in an ersatz blow job. Then there’s cute, smart Amy, who talks of her insecurities, not realizing at age 17 how charming she will be as an adult. The most touching short of all is one that shows the relationship between a chubby Latino girl and her extremely obese father: she cries to the camera when she’s alone, fearing that dad will have a fatal heart attack and leave her alone in the world. Kudos to Dick, an indie filmmaker who manages a career of integrity and idealism while residing in Hollywood-owned LA. (90 minutes)