Video Diaries

Justice Sucks is 16-year-old Vonnie's story. At 12, she was taken into care by the social services after being abused by her stepfather. Thus began an unhappy journey through a succession of children's homes. Vonnie uses her diary to expose her own pain and to highlight the inadequacies of the system.

Seventeen-year-old Chris Needham is Loughborough's leading heavy-metal philosopher. He's putting together a band - but Manslaughter's bassist has no bass, the drummer can't play and Chris's mum says he's got to be in bed by nine o'clock. His confident public face often collapses, leaving him depressed, confiding in the video camera. Hilarious but touching, his diary is the inside story of so many bored and energetic youths who hang around the shopping arcades and dream of becoming rock stars.

Aged 13, Daniel Moss thinks life is too short to wait for adulthood before starting on the ladder to success. His unrelenting sprint on the path to greatness leaves a trail of exhausted parents and relatives in its wake. But he also has a bar mitzvah to get through, a stage play to write and direct, and school exams to take. Daniel's parents are divorced, but he maintains a close relationship with both of them, offering a unique view of modern family life from the perspective of a child in the middle. Fast and funny, Daniel's video diary keeps pace with the breathless routine of his life as a young Jewish boy - under pressure, and frustrated by the slow adult world.

Jennifer is 15 and desperately wants to be "a normal teenage girl", but she has what she declares to be a disadvantage - her mother is severely disabled with multiple sclerosis. She loves her mother, but is sometimes frustrated by having to be a carer instead of carefree like her friends. In her diary, Jennifer examines this conflict of emotions, and her camera becomes a friend and confidant.

Julie is severely anorexic and lives with five other anorexic girls in a special home. Her camera is her intimate and only friend, to which she reveals her life with shocking honesty. Motivated by a desperation for other people to understand her illness, Julie is determined to hide nothing and spare nobody's feelings, especially her own.

For Ben May , living in Peckham and boxing mad, adolescence is not an angst-ridden phase full of problems, it is simply an extended training session on the road to a professional boxing career. At the age of 15, he has already been boxing for seven years and is the British ABA champion at his weight. For him there is no dilemma - boxing is much more than a punch-up, it is a highly developed skill which demands dedication. It also represents his only chance to "earn bundles".

At 13, Rachel has been a traveller most of her life. She has never been to school, and her home is wherever the old converted coaches and tepees happen to be. Her mother is part of the more "conventional" travelling community, but Rachel is drawn towards the New Age lifestyle, with its raves and festivals. Suspended between two worlds, she uses her video diary to search for an identity she can call her own.

While in Haiti during the 1987 election, Geoffrey Smith and a friend stumbled across a horrific massacre at a polling station. A gunman returned to the scene and opened fire, killing the man in front of him and shooting Geoffrey through the leg. Ever since the shooting, Geoffrey has been plagued by nightmares and fear, and earlier this year he decided to return to Haiti to find the man who shot him, hoping that this may be the key to his recovery. He arrives to find Haiti living under an international trade embargo; violence, fear and oppression are rife under the brutal military junta. Despite his friends' warnings, Geoffrey braves fear, intimidation and silence in his search. He makes friends with a voodoo priest who tries to persuade him to pursue a more Haitian solution-to his problem by immersing himself in the culture and voodoo religion.

At the age of 28, Steve Feltham was dissatisfied with his life and work installing burglar alarms in Dorset. When a friend asked him what he would really like to do, he replied, "Find the Loch Ness monster." He sold his home and business to finance an indefinite vigil on the shores of Loch Ness, bought a caravan, and set off for Scotland to be a full-time monster hunter. When he arrived on the banks of the loch, Steve realised he had a few tests to pass if he was to be accepted as a resident hunter. Not the least of these was surviving a hard Highland winter, which helped to gain him the respect of the locals. His dream of escaping the rat race is frequently shattered by the arrival of TV crews, April Fool jokers, and David Bellamy.

Last year Edel O'Brien went to Russia as unpaid chaperone to nine Irish teenage girls beginning their first term at the Perm Ballet School. With no school lessons or activities set up for the girls, and virtually no contact with the Irish organisers, Edel's job soon becomes a nightmare of chaos and frustration. Struggling to look after the group, whose major preoccupations are Russian boys and chocolate, she tries to combat their boredom and homesickness. Meanwhile, the ballet school seems totally unprepared for its western pupils and more interested in the money they are paying than their dancing abilities.

After 12 years, singer and Elvis impersonator Scott Davis feels trapped and disillusioned by the pub and club circuit of the north east. He rebels against his agent and, in true Hollywood style, books himself a mini-tour in Orlando, Florida. The fabulous reception he receives from the audiences there give him a tantalising glimpse of another world. Back home in England life seems even harder to take as the recession hits the entertainment business.

All her life, Mjka Scott has battled with her sexual identity. As Michael she was a truck driver, a stuntman and an actor. She married and became a father but finally decided to become fully what she always believed she was - a woman. Enter Mjka, a flamboyant trans-sexual actress and model. After years of hormone treatment and cosmetic surgery she prepares herself for the final operation. First she has to live as a woman for two years and convince her psychiatrist that she is ready for the point of no return.

Rural GP Dr Ylli Hasani risked imprisonment in totalitarian Albania by listening to the BBC World Service to keep up to date with world events, especially English football. His film is the first programme to portray in depth the lives of ordinary Albanians as they live through massive social upheaval. Hasani tries to leave his country to work in the west, but his first visit to London is to supervise the completion of his film - and to try to meet some of his football idols, particularly Gary Lineker.

In 1990, Willa Woolston returned to America to persuade her sisters to join with her in uncovering a buried family history of violence inflicted on them by their stepmother. The video diary she made, My Demons, treated the subject of extreme child abuse with honesty and shocking detail. In her second film, Willa revisits her family in Philadelphia to find out what effects those dreadful secrets have had on their lives, and while there, she discovers that her stepmother still has the power to disrupt the family. Armed with the knowledge that abusers have themselves often been abused, Willa determines to find out more about her stepmother's past.

The controversial situation of the Jewish settlers in Palestine (beyond the "green line"), is represented through the everyday life of the Oppenheim family. The action goes back 15 years before the 1992 Israeli legislative election.