The student travel agency USIT estimates that 8,400 students are going to the US on J-1 visas this summer. Like last year, there are enough visas for everyone. Like last year, such is the desperation to get there early and get the good jobs that there'll be overnight queues at the USIT office on Aston Quay.
Last year, Anna Rodgers queued up to make the trek for a second time, having spent the previous summer in San Diego. This time she took a camera to the US to record the experiences and encounters she - and some of the 8,400 students - had. Clearly keen to avoid making a derivation of Ibiza Uncovered, she decided against depicting the hedonism of what is for most students their first summer away, opting instead for a recreation of the travels that Jack Kerouac espoused in On The Road, checking in briefly on a cross-section of J-1 students and comparing their discoveries as she made her way across the country.
The breadth of her journey is impressive, as she criss-crosses the country from San Francisco to New York and back via the popular Burning Man festival in Nevada. It's a brave undertaking, the result of which is an interesting travel diary, and a very impressive directorial debut.
Travelling by Greyhound bus, you just might meet ex-cons and your common-or-garden maniac with a knife, and Rodgers is no exception when it comes to looking for - and finding - dramatic situations. Though essentially a travelogue, the sound is clear, and the camerawork serves the story well, framing interview subjects without tilting for the "youth" angle so beloved of mediocre directors. Her tale of life on the road is cut to a strong soundtrack featuring Irish talents; from the excellent Mitcheners to Dave Cleary and Ultramack's Decal.
What, then, of the poor J-1 students of the title? They're stuck in experimental living conditions (21 to a bedroom) and minimum wage jobs in the major cities - not because they don't want adventures, or are suffering from a lack of imagination, but because they often can't afford internal travel in the US. It's unfortunate that the film does not highlight more of the basic monetary facts. It costs £713 to get to San Francisco for the summer, for example. Add a few hundred quid to stay alive for a few weeks, and you have to sell clam chowder out a window all day and drink cheap malt liquor for kicks. If you're lucky, you'll get a two-week holiday at the end of that summer. You'll need it.
There's real drama in the J-1 story that is only hinted at here. We briefly meet Seamus, a shock of ginger hair atop a guy working in Godiva's Chocolate emporium on Manhattan's 5th Avenue, exclaiming "If you want to be lucky here, you can be!" He seems already sold on the American dream, almost giddy from contact with all the rich people and chocolate.
Or there's the guy in Chicago still shellshocked from a night on the south side of town with "black people . . . rap music . . . now I feel like they're my brothers". This is the kind of learning that a J-1 summer provides. Yes, some only get drunk together and rip sinks out of walls, and Dominic D'Orazi of USIT San Francisco might be right to describe some as "coddled, over-parented . . . we see a lot of spoilt children", but people change. However, the camera flits from subject to subject and then hits the road.
In the second film, the story returns to San Francisco via Portland, Oregon. A second look can change the complexion of a city known largely for its past achievements, for free love and for beat poets roaming the sidewalks. All kinds of people are drawn to its past, but many for more practical reasons than Kerouac ever mentioned. The relatively liberal social security system and kind weather attracts thousands of people without a place to stay. Many are sick, and find themselves on the streets because of inadequate health care in an otherwise tolerant city. There aren't many Vietnam veterans ravaged by LSD, tramping around Republican strongholds such as New Hampshire but there are hundreds on Haight Street, sleeping in doorways.
At Nevada's Burning Man Festival at the end of the summer, the J-1 students re-appear, freed from their jobs, and quite changed from their initial appearance. The meek, nervous faces you last saw at the airport in June have gone. There's no doubt that a few months in the US change you, and so they should if you get the chance.
The first episode of J-Wanderers is on Network 2 at 10.05 p.m. on Wednesday