Filmmaker Maria Finitzo says the message of her documentary “5 Girls” is that girls are strong. Haibinh Nguyen, one of the five, says the message is that girls need someone who’s there for them. Those messages interweave as the film unfolds.
Finitzo and her crew followed five Chicago-area girls for three years to shoot the documentary, which airs at
9 p.m. CDT Tuesday and repeats at 3 p.m. Sunday as part of the P.O.V. series on WTTW-Ch. 11. It is produced by Kartemquin Films, the company behind “Hoop Dreams.”
“We wanted stories that were compelling and girls who had a spark to them,” says Finitzo, who chose the final five girls from an initial group of more than 50. Here’s a glimpse at the girls and their stories as the documentary begins:
Haibinh: A sophomore at Whitney Young High School who came to the United States at age 10, she struggles both to honor her Vietnamese heritage and enjoy American freedoms. A top student, Haibinh, 15, places huge demands on herself. She says in the film: “I know your achievement is supposed to be separate from your personality. It’s supposed to be separate from who you are. But I keep saying that that’s the only thing that will make me happy.”
Amber: She lives on the South Side with her mom, younger siblings and stepdad. Her dad died when she was 6. In her first words to the camera, 15-year-old Amber says: “People just don’t care about you at all. I found out the hard way. Nobody care about you but yourself.”
Amber’s story is perhaps the most raw of all the girls’. She leaves home after a big fight with her mother and takes up with a guy who’s under house arrest. But by film’s end, she stands out as a real-life heroine.
Aisha: This 16-year-old honor student and athlete from River Forest lives with her strict but loving dad. She struggles with her parents’ divorce and her father’s tough demands. (“I don’t believe in crutches,” he says in the film to explain why he never put training wheels on little Aisha’s bike.)
Toby: The gifted daughter of two Hyde Park doctors, 13-year-old Toby basks in her parents’ love. But at the same time, she is eager to define herself outside of their expectations. (When she goes out for cross-country, her mom tries to talk her out of it, saying, “It’s just not Toby.”)
Corrie: The 17-year-old New Trier senior says her classmates find her odd because she’s political, bisexual and dresses punk–and she can deal with that. But some of the film’s most wrenching moments come when her fundamentalist Christian father talks about her bisexuality, which he calls “her unresolved sexuality” and considers a form of rebellion.
The girls, their parents and others in their worlds grow more oblivious to the camera as the film progresses. They bicker, tease each other, hug and simply hang out. What emerges is a picture of adults who don’t always have it together (viewers might cringe when Amber’s mom swears during a fight or Aisha’s dad harangues her during a basketball game), but ultimately do care. (The relationship between Amber and her mentor, a former teacher, is lovely to watch.)
“You tried to forget the cameras were there,” Haibinh says. “They spent hundreds and hundreds of hours filming us. They had tons of tape. And they wouldn’t let us see it while they were filming, because they didn’t want us to change how we acted.”
Haibinh, now 19, laughs when describing a few awkward moments caught on film, such as when her date at a dance asks her whether he’s supposed to be her friend or boyfriend. But she says she was glad to have the camera focused on her.
“Maria would ask us about our lives, and she was there for us,” Haibinh says. “Knowing someone wants to know about your life makes you feel good about yourself.”
Finitzo says her job as a filmmaker was to “capture what went on at the moment and have it be an honest representation. You don’t have experts saying girls are this way and this is what happens to girls. Our opinions and what we think play very little into what you see. It’s not important what I think.”
The documentary grinds along through the first half-hour. Many viewers might click the remote after a few sprawling moments–but Finitzo believes that will be their loss.
“The beginning is the slowest or weakest part. I’ve never been crazy about it,” she says. “I’d say stick with it. You have to get to know the girls, have to realize there are five of them. It’s hard to sit through a two-hour documentary. But if you’re patient, there’s a good film there.”
The film made a lasting impression on Finitzo, 49, who says she became very attached to the girls.
“It’s hard to hear about all their personal triumphs and falling-downs without caring for them,” she says.
To detail the girls’ successes and failures would dim the documentary’s shining moments. But much of the outcome is apparent in the meaning Finitzo has taken from the film: “The traditional media doesn’t like to portray girls as OK, because they don’t think there’s a story there,” she says. “But most girls are OK. There are a lot of strong women out there, and strong women come from strong girls.”
