The Lollipop Generation

Plot

The Lollipop Generation tells the story of 'Georgie', a runaway teenager played by Jena von Brücker, and the people she meets on the "...outlying streets with no name..." At the same time, the film serves a diaristic function, documenting the people the director has met and the cities she travelled to, capturing an entire generation of underground performers.

Locations

The film was shot on location across Canada and the U.S.A., and features scenes at sites since demolished, such as Metro Theatre, Riverdale Hospital and the Adventure playground in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Retail Slut in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Production

The film was made over a period of 15 years, "one Super-8 reel at a time", whenever the director could afford to buy another cartridge of film. In the end, the Toronto band Kids on TV organized a benefit so that G.B. Jones could finish it.

Reception

It has been described by the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema as, "...a trip through epileptic shots of documentary ugliness that go right to the origins and essence of sexually anarchic cinema...". However, Peter Keough of The Boston Phoenix insists, "There's a fine line between the trash of early John Waters and just plain garbage. G.B. Jones, perhaps to her credit, ignores it completely." Using Canadian pop culture reference points, Toronto's Eye Weekly calls it, "Scrappy as hell, yet often charming, it's a lost Degrassi High episode remade as an amateur porn flick and sometimes as sweet as all that candy." The 23rd Annual London L & G Film Festival catalogue says, "Shot on Super 8 and video, The Lollipop Generation harnesses these tools of the traditional home movie and uses them to make a fucked up family film."