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2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEDate: 2009-10-01
Contact: Kim Wall
Public Relations Program Coordinator
Marketing and Community Relations Office
University of New Hampshire, Manchester
(603) 641-4306
kim.wall@unh.edu
Perfect: Films that Debunk the Myth of Body Perfection
Manchester, NH: UNH Manchester is hosting a film series this fall, “Perfect: Films that Debunk the Myth of Body Perfection.” The series is free, open to the public and will be held in the college’s third floor auditorium.
Monday, October 12, 12:00-2:00
Disfigured: A Film about Women and Weight
Synopsis: Lydia is a fat, graceful woman struggling to maintain her identity in fashionable Venice Beach, CA. Though she is a member of a Fat Acceptance Group (a movement dedicated to fighting prejudice against fat people), she still struggles with complex feelings about her body and its place in the world.
Darcy, a recovering-anorexic Venice real estate agent, is struggling with the same issues from a very different perspective. Her attempt to join the Fat Acceptance Group (since she sees herself as fat) is quickly rejected - but it introduces her to Lydia.
Though they seem at first to be each other’s worst nightmare, Lydia and Darcy begin to confide in each other. Meeting warily in the social minefields of hunger and satisfaction, anger and femininity, sexuality and fashion, trust and fear...they become friends.
But then Lydia, stirred by a growing romance with a sweet overweight guy named Bob, asks Darcy for an unusual favor: she wants anorexia lessons.
When Darcy lets Lydia inside her secret inner world, it forces both women to confront deeply-buried feelings about their bodies - and nothing will ever be the same again, for either one.
Thursday, October 22, 1:00 – 2:30
Do I Look Fat?
Synopsis: A feature-length documentary with fat on the brain -fat that we feel, fat that we think and all sorts of fat problems that manifest from fat-phobic thinking inside the fat-wary gay community. As one person puts it, "fat is the little word with big meaning."
This "big meaning" is explored with a careful lens turned toward the gay community itself. From the personal stories of seven diverse men who have struggled, or continue to struggle, with eating disorders and body image issues, Do I Look Fat? uncovers reoccurring and interconnecting themes that support this "self-esteem disorder." Themes such as childhood wounding, internalized homophobia, the effects of HIV/AIDS on the body and the prevalence of substance abuse histories are among a few that underscore the film. Perhaps most importantly, the film doesn't shy away from asking why these common histories have, until now, been left in the proverbial closet at a community level.
With a sensitivity that never panders toward sensationalism, the film weaves together the personal and the clinical with support from several experts in the field of eating disorders -an M.D. of a renowned eating disorder clinic, an art therapist, and a gay therapist who's battled with his own eating disorder. The result is a comprehensive introduction to how such a small word like "fat" managed such large and complex meanings among gay individuals and the community as a whole.
Monday, November 2, 12:00 – 1:30
Beauty Mark: A Film About Weight in American Pop-Culture
Synoposis: Beauty Mark is for anyone who has ever felt invisible because they didn't conform to our culture's impossible, unhealthy, abnormal beauty standards. This courageous film examines popular culture's toxic emphasis on weight and looks through the eyes of Boulder-based psychotherapist and former world-class triathlete Diane Israel-- who tells her own story while interviewing other champion athletes, body builders, fashion models and inner-city teens about their experiences relating to self-image.
This deeply personal and funny film asks some tough questions ... How do our families influence our relationships with our own bodies? How do popular culture "standards" get inside of our hearts and heads? In what ways can sports actually make us sicker instead of healthier? Former champion athletes, including David Scott, Ellen Hart Pena and Brenda Maller share their stories while notable luminaries such as playwright Eve Ensler, author Paul Campos and cultural critic Naomi Wolf provide their insights.
An elite runner and triathlete until age 28, Diane won the Pikes Peak Marathon and several other major races after settling in Colorado in the early 1980s. She retired from competition after collapsing from anorexia (sometimes called "athletic bulimia", a disorder many athletes suffer from, but which few experts knew anything about at that time). Diane went back to school to become a psychotherapist and is now a professor of human development at Naropa University, a counselor and the co-owner of a women’s fitness center. She continues to run, but strives to live her life at a less frantic pace.
UNH Manchester, UNH's urban campus, offers liberal arts and applied majors in business, science, and technology, all with an urban focus. UNH Manchester is UNH. Learn more at www.unhm.unh.edu.
