Michelle DaCruz
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 26/02) - Remember 13? That awkward, exciting, boring, precocious, daunting age. Lillace Kenta remembers it daily and she has it all on videotape.

Kenta is on a world tour, documenting the lives of 13-year-old girls, giving 'grrrl power' a global perspective.

Lillace Kenta, 30, rose to great heights to catch student Linna O'Hara's outdoor recreation class. The group climbed into the snowy hills near William McDonald school to practise building campfires in the winter. - Michelle DaCruz/NNSL photo

Yellowknife's own Linna O'Hara shared her life with the first time filmmaker for a week, everything from outdoor education classes, to soccer and a dance at William McDonald school will end up on celluloid.

O'Hara is at ease in front of the camera.

"I'm glad it's me who's representing Canada. It's going to be cool to watch," O'Hara said.

Canada is the fourth stop on Kenta's tour, she began the interviews in her native Australia, then New Zealand and Fiji before coming North.

"Thirteen is a good transition stage, both physically and mentally. Girls become less egocentric, are more self-reliant, and outspoken," said Kenta.

She chose a girl from Yellowknife to expose her Australian audience to a city that seldom receives as much coverage as Canadian urban centres like Vancouver or Toronto.

"I am not looking at a national picture of each country, but I am creating a global snapshot," said Kenta.

"In 15 years these girls will be running the show."

Kenta met O'Hara at her best friend's wedding before coming up with the idea for a documentary. She finds most of her girls through mutual connections, others she hopes to find by chance while travelling.

Last year she quit her job as a teacher to become an actor, and while she was waiting for Spielberg to call, Kenta decided to take a pro-active approach to her career.

She sold her car, cashed in her bonds, took a loan from her parents, and blew her life savings on a super slick video camera.

Girls Inc., designed to be 24 half-hour episodes each featuring one girl, is set to be screened in Australia and then Kenta has hopes for world distribution.

She is confident that corporate sponsorship will come any time now, and then she will gladly pay her generous parents back. So far she's been given free long-distance telephone access from an Australian phone company. This comes in handy during her radio interviews to the Australian Broadcasting company, where she gives bi-weekly updates on her journey. She also writes a monthly feature for Girlfriend magazine, an Aussie teen publication, about each girl.

What has been most striking so far, Kenta admits, is no matter how varied the girls backgrounds are, she has found they have similar interests.

"All the girls talk to their friends, not about boys, but about their hopes, and futures. They have all loved to sing too," she said.

She has chosen girls with a variety of backgrounds: from indigenous, isolated, populated cultures, islands, coastal, rural and agricultural areas. Her next stop is Alaska, then the U.S., Mexico, Peru, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and then home.

"It's not all sleepovers and school dances," she said. "I am going to try to find a girl who works in the sex trade in Cambodia."

Kenta estimates the journey will cost close to $30,000 and take at least 11 months.