When Olive Van Elmeren entered the Colorado Springs-based Youth Documentary Academy (YDA) program in the summer of 2020, at the recommendation of a Manitou High School teacher, she wasn’t sure what she’d make a film about. The COVID-19 pandemic had moved classes normally held in person to Zoom, making it impossible to collaborate actively with a film crew venturing out into the community to shoot footage.
But the next summer, in 2021, Van Elmeren was able to join a class of contemporaries at YDA and learn hands-on the tools of the trade that would result in her documentary film, “Skinned Knees,” winner of the 2022 Best Overall award out of 2,500 entries at the All- American High School Film Festival in New York City.
Making the film, she said, changed her life. Two years later, she’s working at Cave of the Winds and enjoying her Manitou life while figuring out what’s next in her life as an artist, a student and a person healing from trauma.
I was very, very vulnerable. -Olive Van Elmeren
“The title ‘Skinned Knees’ came from a poem I wrote,” Van Elmeren said. “At the time, my sister, 10 years younger than me, was learning to ride a bike. I didn’t learn how until I was 12 or 13 because I didn’t have a father figure around.”
Van Elmeren was loosely drawn to the idea of making a film about the estrangement from her biological father, whom she hadn’t seen in a decade. In the year between first entering YDA and the summer she made her film, she’d been hospitalized in Utah for an eating disorder and was in therapy, exploring issues from her past that remained cloudy.
Ultimately, she decided to confront the issue directly, interviewing her bio dad in his hometown of Grand Junction and investigating the events from her early life that had left a mark on her psyche. On film, she interviewed her mother, who disclosed acts of domestic violence that Olive had no memory of but that had deeply affected her and the entire family.
“I used to get really scared to be left alone,” Van Elmeren said. “There are parts of your life that you move through blindly, then you have to circle back and assess what happened. I was shocked and surprised by what I learned.”
Choosing to face her father, and a past that she knew was volatile, was a momentous decision for her, then 18 years old. But Van Elmeren knew she had to do it, for the film and for herself.
“I was scared he’d get mad,” she said. “I was very, very vulnerable but I had a safety plan with my therapist. I knew what to do in the case of an emergency. For me, it was a relief. I wanted to find out things my brain had blocked out from my earlier life.”
Van Elmeren’s film was recently screened at the Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival and is featured on “Our Time,” a public television series comprising Youth Documentary Academy films and interviews with their makers, broadcast on 83 stations around the country.
In early November, her film and others were shown to Colorado Springs District 11 students at Doherty, Mitchell, Coronado and Palmer High Schools in a program called Youth Media Matters.
YDA director Tom Shepard, moderating a session at Palmer along with Van Elmeren and YDA filmmaker Madison Legg of Colorado Springs, said that films like “Skinned Knees” were normalizing conversations about mental health and enabling conversations about difficult subjects among young people.
Van Elmeren said making her documentary film was “100 percent” healing, especially the editing process, which reminded her of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, designed to help identify and move past trauma.
“It helped me to not be so scared of my past,” she said.
Van Elmeren didn’t reunite with her biological father as a result of “Skinned Knees,” but on film he took responsibility and apologized for his actions and their impact on the family. That, she said, was all she needed, and putting it on film removed the story, previously a mystery, from her personal space to another realm, enriching both her life and in many cases, the lives of audience members.
“You learn you’re not alone in this,” she said. “There are so many other people with similar life stories and experiences.
TO LEARN MORE
The Youth Documentary Academy is housed at Pikes Peak State College in Colorado Springs. Students aged 14 to 18 are encouraged to apply to the summer session. YDA offers 12 tuition-free fellowships, each worth more than $5,000, per year to support training, equipment and facilities. Information: www.youthdocumentary.org.
