New to DVD this week: CODEGIRL
Lesley Chilcott’s look at a competition that encourages teenage girls to enter the tech space premiered at CPH:DOX last year. The doc has also screened at Athena and the Los Angeles Women’s International fests.
Noting the lack of women in the otherwise burgeoning tech field, the Technovation Challenge aims to kickstart girls’ involvement, ultimately awarding a $10,000 prize to a winning smartphone app pitch developed by teams of high school girls around the world. Chilcott follows a number of teams as they prepare their entries, which are meant to focus on identifying and solving local problems via technology, and learn of their standing in the overall competition. Once a team fails to advance, the film moves on to profile a new set of contenders from scratch, ultimately resulting in an oddly cursory sense of eleven teams and their hit-or-miss projects, and very little individuation for its members. In contrast to other films in the competition doc sub-genre, the focus seems less about who wins and more about the empowerment gained through involvement in Technovation. Still, what’s missing is a personal or driving force to the narrative, aside from the mechanics of the challenge process. The audience doesn’t have a chance to connect with any particular team or individual personality, making the presentations by the finalists drag, and the announcement of the winning group lack impact.
what (not) to doc 