Children of the Golden West


"Space limitations prohibit me from even summarizing the melange of fascinating hippies that animate Lipton's world, but we are generally treated to a provocative documentary kaleidoscope of Berkeley wit, defiance, insight, mania, obsession, and delusion ... a definite intimacy and spontaneity are maintained by the close, direct-eye-contact approach. The 'characters' stare unstintingly into the lens as they speak, and the effect is very much like standing toe-to-toe with someone during a conversation. This technique invests the film with a sense of familiar honesty that is pleasantly and nakedly uncontrived.

"With CHILDREN, as with his previous film FAR OUT, STAR ROUTE, Lipton has set himself the task of documenting the New Culture, not by analyzing it or discussing its process of emergence, but simply by showing that it exists. ... [I]njustice and rebellion are not invoked, and the characters are obviously already at home with their countercultural identities. This is a crucial kind of documentation to undertake, but limitations inhere either in the genre itself, or, more likely, in Lipton's approach to the genre." - Michael Shedlin, Film Quarterly