大象传媒

21 years ago, we filmed a group of 7 year old children from right across the country, wanting to create a portrait of Britain at the beginning of a new century. We asked these children to share their thoughts about love, God, money, friendships and family. We invited them to share their hopes and dreams for the future. Having travelled the length and breadth of the UK to choose them, we planned to re-visit them every 7 years to continue seeing their journey through life. Quite an ambition. The sheer variety of personality and opinion was fascinating to observe. And yet there are things that unite them. At 7 there was great innocence and humour. At 14 they were all facing the challenges of adolescence, and at 21 they shared their hopes and fears as they approached adulthood. Now, as adults all aged 28, we have filmed them again, for this fourth instalment, 28Up Millennium Generation. It’s been a fascinating relationship that now spans 21 years - for them, a large part of their entire lives. For us, an absolute privilege to befriend them and see them all grow up on film. Our approach in making the films has always been to portray their lives as honestly as possible, to let them speak for themselves, and to show them going about their daily lives - at work, or doing the things they mostly like to do.

At the beginning of last year, when we were due to start filming, we faced an unexpected challenge with the pandemic. Most of our participants, like everybody, were restricted in going about their normal lives, but having delayed the start of shooting twice, we decided to proceed come what may. The films always capture a moment in time and we decided this would be no different. And we found that filming had different and unexpected rewards - a strong sense of intimacy and a hope and optimism as our characters face an uncertain future.

One of the important aspects of filming the series is that we don’t document every detail of their lives, we only drop in every seven years, so the experience for them is not too intrusive. There is no contractual arrangement with the contributors, nor obligation - we rely on our relationship of trust and their willingness to participate in the wider project. What we have found over time is how strangely close our relationship is with the contributors, given how rarely we see them. Perhaps it is because we have known them for such a large part of their lives, and because the memories of being filmed are significant. Many of them describe it as being part of an odd but tight-knot family, a shared undertaking that bonds them. We have a huge respect and gratitude for them all for sharing their thoughts and stories, and have always regarded it as a huge responsibility. When we started this project, going around countless schools and youth clubs in 1999, Michael Apted, who made the original 7Up series that began in 1964 and who sadly died this year, told us that it would become far more important to us than we could ever imagine. He was right.

Julian Farino (Director), Melanie Archer (Producer)

28Up is on 大象传媒 One and 大象传媒 iPlayer from Wednesday 29 September, 9pm.

Courtney comes from the Kirkby area near Liverpool. At 14 she was ignoring boys, ‘who would mature eventually’ Spurred on by her parents stressing the importance of education, at 21 she had made it to University and was studying hard, and feeling ‘like a 50 year old in a 20 year old’s body’. At 28 she is close to finding a career that achieve her goal of not being stereotyped as an inner city Liverpudlian...

When we filmed Sanchez at 14, he was pinning his hopes on a career in football. He was a star player at Leeds United Academy and was dreaming of captaining England. Born and raised in Chapeltown, Leeds, he was mindful of the distractions of girls and under the guidance of his father, determined to stay single-minded. By 21, he had made the bench for Leeds first team, but had had injury problems and his prospects had stalled. When we find him now at 28, he had experienced great disappointments but his star has risen as he had grasped some unexpected opportunities.

John comes from Slough but since 19 has wanted to move to Australia, where it is ‘more chilled’. He has always valued independence and has his own flat by 21. He sees money as ‘fun tokens’ to allow him to follow his passions of BMX biking and raves and festivals and hanging out with his loyal bunch of mates. Covid threatens all his dreams and leisure but he is taking it in his stride, determined as ever to enjoy himself.

Ben grew up on the small and beautiful Scottish island of Mull, and at 7 thought that heaven was just like Mull, only higher. When he was 14, he had to travel every week to the mainland because there weren’t any secondary schools on Mull, and was homesick. At 21, he was qualifying to be a joiner, and now lives on the mainland, but he pays frequent visits back to Mull to see family and friends. What he thinks he needs to do is move to Glasgow.