Seventeen went from being banned from broadcast by PBS to success on the festival circuit and a theatrical release. Even today, it is easy to see why the film was controversial. The portrait of a group of working-class high school seniors, it casts an unflinching eye at profanity and delinquency, teen pregnancy, drug use, interracial romance and, ultimately, betrayal, heartbreak and mortality. The two documentarians each shot with separate cameras; DeMott filming the women and Kreines the men. The finished product both reveals the workings of high school as an institution and displays the extraordinary intimacy between filmmakers and subjects. – DP