Made in collaboration with @sophievansoest

The youth of Christchurch have been through a lot, there is no doubt in anyone's mind about that. For nearly 10 years, Christchurch has suffered through earthquakes, fires and most recently a terrorist attack. Caught right in the middle, are the adolescents. The young people. Their stories exist, but they aren’t heard nearly as much as they need to be. In reality, these are the stories that need to be told, as they are a refreshing take on the stories the media has regurgitated over the last decade. We have talked to four young people from Christchurch who have spent what is nearly a decade of their lives, their formative years, growing up, experiencing and adapting to these tragedies.  

September 4th 2010 was the start of it all, when at 4:35am a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit the sleeping city, this was the first experience of a large scale disaster for many of Christchurch’s youth. As if it wasn’t hard enough to comprehend that terrifying disaster, only months later the city was hit by yet another large scale earthquake on February 22nd, 2011 at 12:51pm. Not only were these disasters immediately physically and mentally challenging for the youth of Christchurch, these events continued to challenge the youth as they carried the heavy weight of the damage with them while living in a broken city.  The stories which young people from Christchurch have are ones that carry a lot of emotion, intense descriptions and the unique ability to pinpoint when their innocence was shattered.

This documentary was created to share the stories and views of Christchurch youth who haven’t had the opportunity to voice what it was like for them living through two earthquakes followed by witnessing a damaging blaze on the Port Hills and a terrorist attack against two of the Muslim community’s Mosques. Topics discussed include the amount and type of media coverage the people of Christchurch encountered after these events, the concept of disaster fatigue, as well as what people remember about a pre earthquake Christchurch, and how it compares now.

Isaac Carter