MARILYN Gaunt has spent the last 35 years making films that delve into the private corners
of ordinary people's lives revealing, in intimate detail, nuances way beyond the scope of the ordinary eye.

Having just signed-off her final film for television, and with 50-odd others under her belt from a career spanning 35 years, she feels it's time to stop looking at other people and put herself under the microscope for a change. Not through a camera lens, though.

"I've got to find out what I'm about, so my task in retirement is to see what needs to be changed about me and face the next big stage of my life. After all, 60 is just a beginning, really..."

Born in Tadcaster and educated at a secondary modern school in Leeds, followed by Leeds College of Art and an MA in film and television at the Royal College of Art, Gaunt has just finished Class of '62: from 16 to 60.

In between 16 and 60 Gaunt has become one of the most acclaimed and respected film makers of her generation, mopping up awards for telling stories of modern life as disparate as teenage gangs, relationships and disability, and the sexual revolution.

A trained sound recordist and editor who also did an early spell as a researcher on This Is Your Life, Gaunt has mostly produced as well as directed her own films. So she was as multiskilled as they came when the television industry began to dispense with old-fashioned crews and slash budgets.

The 90-minute 16 to 60 tells the story of Sally, Denise, Margaret, Dorothy, Gillian and Katy – six other Baby Boomers from working class families in Leeds. After school they all went their separate ways, until Gaunt tracked them (and 19 others from their class) down in 1983, when they were pushing 40.

She filmed that 21-year reunion, and from it she picked out six women who were willing to talk in depth about how their lives had fared. They were, Gaunt felt, representative of so many thousands of others who had experienced post-war working class mores and traditions.

Twelve years later, in 1995, Gaunt and her camera were back to catch up with the now 50-year-olds, telling the story of divorces, children and grandchildren, thoughts and feelings. Another 14 years on, she has filmed them again, learning how they feel about their lives as they let go of one phase and face another.

"There are things I know about my friends that I'll never tell," says Gaunt, who lives in Shropshire these days. "But talking to them has been so good for me. Take Margaret, for instance – the one who realised all our romantic teen dreams by being whisked away to marry a handsome foreigner and live abroad.

"When I first filmed her, she was a bored housewife and mother, who got away from it all by going out dancing and called herself 'a man's woman' and could never have married someone without money. Over the years she started learning from her mistakes and changing.

"She looked back at the things she'd said in the first film and although she didn't like them, she said they were true. It was fantastic to go back this time and find how much she had grown and come through difficulties like two marriage break-ups and problems with her new partner. She's also successfully painting, although at 16 her dad had said she could never do it, and did not want her to go to art school."

Gaunt says she and her peers were 11-Plus failures who didn't read The Female Eunuch or necessarily feel that feminism was about them.

"A big motivation was the question in my head about whether the Swinging Sixties had 'swung' for them. Had the Pill and Women's Lib touched them, or were they living their lives much as their mothers had?

"I feel I benefited enormously from the 60s...I slipped through the educational net, ending up with an MA but no A-levels, striding up Queensway in my mini skirt and thinking I could do anything. But generally, we were from the working class, with parents who didn't really believe in all that. Gillian suffered from it, as did Margaret."

There are many poignant moments in the film, among which are the many frustrations of Gillian's life. Forced by her dad to go to work rather than take exams, she put away her dreams of being a teacher, and has spent her life doing menial jobs and caring for others – husband, children, grandchild and now a rather ungrateful mother. Her only pleasure in life seems to be going for bus rides using her pensioner's free pass.

"Ending up with the women I did was partly to do with the strong and varied stories they told, and also down to who would agree to filming," says Gaunt. "But what I had, in the end, was a representative sample of white working class women.

"All of them got married before they were 24, the average at the time, and one in three is now divorced, which is the current national divorce rate."

One of the group is a widow and another has a disabled child. The candour with which they talk about their hopes, fears, resentments and disappointments is a tribute to Gaunt's tremendous skill as a film maker. She will continue
to help young film makers and also executive-produce films made by others. But she's glad
to be bowing out of hands-on directing.

Among her reasons is the changing climate of television. She's tired of situations with (some) commissioning editors who argue, for example, that her brand of thoughtful film is "muesli" when the audience "wants Coco Pops".

"It's insulting to the audience to suggest that we can't give them anything that might require them to think...we shouldn't treat our audience as though they are thick."


Class of '62 – 16 to 60 will be shown at 9pm on BBC2 on Monday, May 19.