Body Typed (working title)
Grantmakers, please click the link below to request additional information about this project or to invite the project manager to submit a formal application to your foundation.
Images
Wet Dreams and False Images
The Guarantee
34x25x36
work-in-progress
Website
Topics
Arts & Culture: Animation , Documentary, International Film, Television
Health: Nutrition/Malnutrition
Human Development: Social Exclusion, Urban, Youth
Human Rights: Gender, Race Politics, Sexuality, Social Exclusion
Information & Media: Communication, Culture, ICT (Information and Computer Technology), Knowledge, Media
Politics: Ethics & Value Systems
Identity Niches
Asian, Caucasian, Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgender, Jewish, Latino, Student, Women, Youth/Teen
Budget
Raised to date: $ 43,000.00
Estimate to complete: $ 60,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $ 0.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 12/19/2008
Status
Production
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
Other: internet audience engagement, schools, community centers, festivals, mobile devices
Key Personnel
Jesse Erica Epstein
Director/ Producer
Jesse Erica Epstein, received an MA in documentary film and gender studies from NYU. She was recently named “one of 25 filmmakers to watch” by Filmmaker Magazine. Her films WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES (Short Subject, Jury Award – Sundance Online Film Festival), and THE GUARANTEE (Best Short Film, Newport International Film Festival) are being distributed by New Day Films (www.newday.com).
Judith Helfand
Executive Producer
Filmmaker, activist and educator Judith Helfand is best known for her ability to take the dark, cynical worlds of chemical exposure and heedless corporate behavior and make them personal, resonant, highly charged, and entertaining. Her films include Blue Vinyl, Healthy Baby Girl, and Everything's Cool.
Building on a decade of developing innovative outreach and organizing efforts around the distribution of her own films, Helfand and veteran film curator and media activist Robert West co-founded Working Films in 1999, a national organization that nearly eight years later is a leader in creating audience engagement campaigns that dynamically link high-profile non-fiction filmmaking to cutting edge social change organizing.
Wendy Ettinger and Julie Parker Benello
Executive Producers
Filmmakers and activists, Wendy, Julie, and Judith founded Chicken & Egg Pictures:
Chicken & Egg supports women filmmakers who are using their unique brand of story-telling to address the social justice, equity and human rights issues of our time, locally, nationally and globally.
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
As short films, the first three segments have been effective teaching tools -- in classrooms, Boys and Girls Clubs, online, in eating disorders clinics, and community centers. At the same time, a feature film would have the ability to reach completely different audiences.
I have been doing a great deal of research and thinking about how to fuse the two – the versatility and usefulness of a short with the reach, respect, and mass audience, specifically a T.V.- viewing audience of a feature.
Audience engagement plans:
1) I have completed the Working Films Content + Intent Documentary Residency at MASS MoCA, where we worked to create an audience engagement plan for the film, and identify potential community and non-profit partners. Under their guidance, I plan to show all of the segments at a summit Girls Empowerment Summit, and continue going to organizations like the Lower East Side Girl’s Club to show the shorts and lead discussions around body image, peer pressure, identity, and self-esteem.
2) Continue educational outreach with the short films to High Schools, Colleges, and Universities through New Day Films (Wet Dreams and False Images and The Guarantee). I have produced a media literacy/body image curriculum guide to work with Wet Dreams and False Images.
3) Online ventures: 34x25x36 received over 1 million views on Youtube, and generated online discussions internationally on Youtube and on numerous blogs.
4) I would like to create a website for the project with a related blog, and interactive elements. Right now there is a blog, but not a website.
5) Festival screenings. The films have screened at festivals such as Sundance, Full Frame, Silverdocs, and SXSW, and toured universities with LUNA Fest. It’s been very useful to travel with the films to festivals, to connect directly with audiences, and to engage in discussions around the issues that the films raise. I would like to continue this outreach with the newer (third and forth) segments.
6) A TV broadcast of the finished feature film would reach a wide audience of people who might not attend a film festival, or who are not enrolled in school.
Specific audience engagement with Wet Dreams and False Images:
7) Because barbershops are often “community centers,” I am extremely interested in doing a screening series in barbershops in the New York area; and in bringing Dee Dee the barber to co-lead discussions. I am specifically seeking support for this audience engagement plan. I believe this would be an effective way to generate discussions around female body image with a mostly male audience. And, that this venture could have lasting impact. (budget $5,000)
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken & Egg Pictures | 12/26/2008 | ||
| The Fledgling Fund | $ 7,500.00 | 09/16/2008 | |
| Chicken & Egg Pictures | $ 7,500.00 | 09/14/2007 | |
| The Fledgling Fund | $ 7,500.00 | 07/19/2007 | |
| Chicken & Egg Pictures | $ 5,000.00 | 11/11/2005 |
Location(s)
87 Lafayette Fl.3
C/O SP NY
New York, NY, 10013
See Google Maps
Short Synopsis
Comprised of four segments, Body Typed (working title), is a feature-length documentary that uses humor to raise serous questions about about body image, cultural identity, and the marketplace of commercial illusion.
Description/Treatment
BODY TYPED (working title) is a series of short documentary films about body image, media literacy, and cultural identity -- that will be combined to make a feature film.
About the project:
Images of female beauty, and specifically advertising images, have helped create unrealistic standards of physical perfection. If women measure how we feel about ourselves against impossible standards of beauty we will never be satisfied with ourselves, and chronically unhappy and judgmental – let alone not truly liberated. As a filmmaker, I believe that the most powerful way to fight media images, and offer girls and boys, women and men an alternative to often damaging messages is with other media messages.
In order to address a variety of issues associated with body image, this film project is comprised of segments with connecting passages. Each segment will be able to stand alone, but linked together they will tell a larger story with greater impact.
The underlying message of the whole film and my goal for its use in the field is: It is not enough for a person with a negative self-image, or an eating disorder to be educated, the community around them needs to be educated in order to change its expectations and definitions. And, by focusing on everyday experiences and not only the extreme, the goal is for us all to examine messages, and judgments, we’ve internalized.
With each story, I will strive to entertain as well as educate; building one narrative upon the other; showing protagonists in the present tense going through and experience and learning something in the process.
The segments:
WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES (complete)
When Dee-Dee the barber learns about the art of photo-retouching, he may never look at his “wall of beauty” the same way again. (Short Subject Jury Award, 2004 Sundance Film Festival)
THE GUARANTEE (complete)
An illustrated documentary tells a dancer’s hilarious story about his prominent nose and the effect if has on his career. (Best Short Film, 2007 Newport International Film Festival)
34x25x36 (complete)
A look at mannequins, religion, and perfection.
(SXSW, Full Frame, True/False, over 1 million hits on Youtube)
SKIN (in production)
Starting in rural India, we are introduced to Renu, a teenage girl, who uses “Fair and Lovely” to lighten her skin. Her relatives talk about why people use the cream, and are astonished by the thought of people in America putting cream on their skin to get tan. We then visit a tanning salon in Brooklyn, where the owner speculates on why people go great lengths to change the color of their skin.
Body Typed will not be a film which scolds or gives answers, instead a film which opens up, explores and asks questions. I am not interested in telling people that it is wrong to try to look beautiful, or to strive to be fit. But, I do mean to reveal, explore, and uncover how advertising is creating impossible standards which no-one is able to live up to in real life; and expectations that if we hold on to, can prevent us from being truly happy in the body we live in.
Virginia Woolf wrote, “It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.” I believe that body image issues are public and mental health issues, and I hope that my filmmaking will contribute to “killing a phantom.”
Thank you for your time and consideration of Body Typed.