Kathryn Price’s “Film: The Art of Understanding Society”

By: Kathryn Price

Teenagers, they are hard to figure out.  Society has been trying to evaluate these creatures by looking into their brains, writing songs about them, and of course portraying films about this stage of being human.  April and Junip is a film about two teenage girls.  The film does not force an extreme personality of teenagers, but comforts them with the knowledge that they are not alone in feeling lost or misplaced.  I was honored to talk to Elektra Johnson, the director, about this film and how it relates to the society around her.

The two girls find a teenage girl’s journal from the 1980’s. Elektra Johnson got this idea from her own two friends and talks about how this film shows how friendship and motherly love can go far.

“This film is refreshing for not having extreme genres of teenagers,” Electra Johnson says. “Everyone knows those movies that show miss perfect and the little freak: Mean girls, The Breakfast Club, and Princess Diaries to name a few.  It’s a time period in everyone’s life that is molded personally to each person making it difficult to make a ‘cure’ for every human while at this stage.  I say cure, because adults treat the teenage emotions and life as a disease that everyone magically grows out of.  Parents tell kids they will get over these feelings soon. Doctors talk about the chemicals in their bodies that are causing what they are feeling and prescribe medicine to keep the symptoms from coming through the skin: pimples.”

“April and Junip sounds like it is going to be a wonderfully thought out film by this director having her own emotional interest in it,” Johnson says. “The main point I believe this movie will pull through to it’s viewers is that people should listen to what teenagers have to say, because they are still human and have a right to voice what they say.”

Look out for the film; it may come to a film festival near you. You can also check out her social media. Elektra Johnson is on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube.