In the tribal society featured here, the young people are preparing for a rites of passage celebration. With it's complex rules and rituals, it's elaborate costumes and warpaint. It's as incomprehensible to outsiders as a rainforest initiation ceremony but rather more expensive, involving a large sacrifice to the alter of Capitalism.

For this is the High School Prom, most quintessentially American of cultural phenomena, the Big Night Out at which US youth says goodbye to schooldays. Kim Flitcroft's eye opening film examines the prom's significance in the lives of half a dozen ordinary teenagers from a nice ordinary Brooklyn School and looks at the essential trappings - the expensive party clothes and hairstyles, stretch limos, photos and floral accesories - which can set them back up to $2000

TELEVISION by SANDIE SMITHIES