Up, R.I.P.

I wonder if the Loud family ever looks back on the footage, amazed they have hours and hours of memories to look at.  As much as I blather away about whatthefuckever on Xmastime, I'm very aware that one day, a long time from now, I'll be glad that there's a place I can go to remember what I was once like. - XMASTIME

Michael Apted, who directed the revolutionary British documentary series Up, has died.

One of his first projects at Granada led to what would become the “Up” series, which began in 1964 as a profile of 14 7-year-old children for the network’s current affairs series “World in Action.” As a researcher and assistant to Canadian director Paul Almond, Apted participated in the selection of the children. Apted directed the later episodes in the series, which had always been aimed at testing Apted’s thesis that the British class system remains largely in place, and is predicated on the Jesuit motto “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will give you the man.”

The children profiled were chosen to represent the range of socioeconomic backgrounds in the U.K. at that time — and the explicit assumption underlying the longitudinal study was that a child’s social class predetermines his or her future. Apted, who was in his early 20s at the time, was only a researcher on the first film in the series, “7 Up,” but directed all subsequent entries.

From the International Documentary Association he won a 1985 IDA Award for “28 Up.” “56 Up,” produced in 2012, won a Peabody Award “for its creator’s patience and its subjects’ humanity.” The latest installment, “63 Up,” was broadcast on British television in June 2019.

I've always meant to watch the entire thing but as of now have only seen various clips from it; regardless, the fact that such a thing was even made is remarkable, both in concept and execution. I was, however, always haunted by the notion that each series may have been the last one he'd survive to do, and now here we are. It also must be the first example of a group of people who could theoretically look back on so much of their own lives on film – perhaps commonplace now, but hardly conceivable then. Probably really fucking weird to be a part of.

Great article in the New York Times (or as I call it, "the Times"), last year.

I ALSO HAD NO IDEA HE DIRECTED COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER!!!!?!?!?!!!!!!