Scenarios USA - United States

The short movies are the product of a national contest sponsored by Scenarios USA, a nonprofit organisation founded in 1998 that encourages teenagers to write personal scripts about the issues they feel affect them most. Young people (12-22 years old) are invited to write stories (either personal or fictional), on issues around sexuality, such as decision-making, trust, sexual orientation, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and communication. In writing the stories, the youth are asked to examine their own choices and behaviours and write about what they know and how they act.

The films are produced in the young writers' hometowns, where youth are involved in every step of production, from casting, to directing, to editing. Well-known professionals are enlisted to direct the films. Although these professionals have a say, the young script writers participate fully in every aspect of the process. Reflecting on the experience of working with a young woman who wrote and starred in "Today I Found Out," one filmmaker said, "I was in service of Samantha, her story and her point of view. She had definite final cut. I was using my experience to help her get her story across." Organisers claim that this young woman's experience - coming face-to-face with and talking to actual teenage mothers whose general course of life she criticised in the film - was an educational process for all involved.

In "Just Like You Imagined?," a boy visits a clinic where it is confirmed that he is HIV-positive; he then has to figure out how to tell his girlfriend. In "Lipstick", a gay girl decides to come out. In "From an Objective Point of View", a girl contemplates whether to break a pact with her best friend, in which both agreed to consult each other before having sex. Click here to view clips of all of the nine films produced, or to purchase them.

The films are designed to address young people's decisions, emotions, and values when it comes to discussing - or having - sex. The process of writing the scripts allows the youth to personalise the issues and implications of films made by and for teenagers.

The films are meant to inspire more in-depth conversation - for pedagogical, not merely entertainment, purposes. The films are being distributed in 36 states through local boards of education, government health departments, community organisations, and mayoral offices. This strategy is designed to give teachers a way to discuss adolescent health in classrooms within the spectrum of abstinence-only to comprehensive sex education policies. Teachers have used the films in the classroom to open up discussion about notions of sexual behaviour presented through popular culture.

Youth, Sexuality, HIV/AIDS, Family Planning, Education.

Scenarios USA was inspired by the project Scenarios from the Sahel, an HIV/AIDS prevention project being conducted by and for adolescents and young adults primarly in three West African countries. Click here for a summary of this project.