Airdate: Love Lust & Lies

If Australia has any match for Seven Up it is surely Gillian Armstrong’s documentary project 33 years in the making.

Armstrong has followed three-working class Adelaide girls since they turned fourteen in 1976. The documentaries are: Smokes and Lollies (1976); 14’s Good 18’s Better (1980); Bingo Bridesmaids and Braces (1988); and Not Fourteen Again (1996).

ABC1 will screen Love Lust & Lies, the fifth film which is a portrait of the lives of Kerry, Josie and Diana. Now aged 47, two of the women are grandmothers.

Love Lust & Lies is the fifth film in the documentary series Gillian Armstrong has been making about the lives, hopes and dreams of three lively, working class Adelaide girls since they turned fourteen in 1976.

For over more than 30 years, Kerry, Josie and Diana’s struggles have captured all our hearts, and Gillian’s series is the first, and longest, documentary longitudinal study of young Australians.

Because of the characters’ commitment to truth and their generous relationship with the filmmaker over such a long period all five films have captured a depth, openness and intimacy about these three ordinary but extraordinary women.

It‘s been 14 years since Not Fourteen Again, which focussed on the then 33 year-old mothers and their teenage daughters, Rebecca, Wendy and Amy.

In Love Lust & Lies Gillian returns to Adelaide in 2009 to explore where Kerry, Josie and Diana – and their families – are now. Significant changes have occurred in all their lives. The past is revisited and themes of growing up, love lost and found, family, and the part ‘destiny’ and opportunity play in our lives, are explored. The result is emotionally resonant and compelling viewing.

The three women are now 47 and two are grandmothers. And Rebecca, Wendy and Amy, the three teenage girls introduced in the last film, all have children of their own. As well, Josie and Kerry’s families include a new generation of teenagers: Michael and Micaela, Steven and Shannon. All of them have compelling stories to tell.

It airs on ABC1 on Thursday September 30 at 8.30pm.