3 February
–
23 April 2006
Films:
Section 3: Gender, Race and SocietyMichael Apted b.194
21 Up 1977
'Give me a child until he's seven and I'll show you the man'. Granada TV's World in Action series took this Jesuit proverb as the basis for 7Up 1963, its acclaimed study of a disparate group of children from different social backgrounds. Apted, who worked as an assistant on 7Up, took up the project to revisit and update the story every seven years. 7 plus seven was televised in 1970, followed by 21Up in 1977 and so on; 49Up was aired in September 2005. This ground-breaking project could be said to have entered the national consciousness as epitomising the documentary form.