PACE UNIVERSITY SCREENING

"For National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, Feb. 21-27: Beauty in the Eyes of the Beheld is a documentary by Liza Figueroa Kravinsky looking at modern perceptions of beauty. Wet Dreams and False Images is a Sundance award-winning documentary by Jesse Epstein that utilizes humor to raise serious concerns about the marketplace of commercial illusion and unrealizable standards of physical perfection. Q&A with filmmakers and special guests follows."

More info at New York Daily News

Peabody Essex Museum Film Day: Defining Beauty

All three shorts will be screened
WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES
THE GUARANTEE
34x25x36

2pm Morse Auditorium

The Guarantee screening in Amsterdam...

as part of Niet Normal: Difference on Display

"From December 16th 2009 to March 7th 2010 a major art exhibition that allows a large audience to experience different works will be held at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. The exhibition, entitled: Niet Normaal * Difference on Display, features the work of internationally renowned artists who in their work address a defining question of our time: what is normal and who decides?

Even as technology and progress generate new opportunities for people of all sorts, shapes and sizes, we seem to be striving to become ever more uniform. The market and the media increasingly determine how we look at ourselves and at each other. Perfection is the norm.

What is this norm, and who actually satisfies it? Where do we draw the line? At a facial wrinkle, a depression, at someone who isn’t interested in getting ahead, at a visible prosthetic device, taking pills to improve intelligence, at major cosmetic surgery?

Artists create space for diversity with humor and insight. Works by among others Marc Quinn, Marlene Dumas, Viktor & Rolf, The Chapman Brothers and Aernout Mik will be exhibited.Science, games and design will also be featured, and there will be a separate movie theater. In addition, performances, discussions, film screenings, lectures and parties will be held. The exhibition and parallel programming will engage, confront and offer alternative perspectives. Rebellion and humor alternate. Art and science come together to confront urgent questions facing today’s society."

MORE INFO AND TICKETS

Barbershop Screening of WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES

“Barbershops have always been a place where people come not only to get a haircut – but to meet and converse about current events, politics, pop culture, music, sports, WOMEN, relationships and more.”
Quentin Walcott of Connect NYC

So, we're taking the film back to where it all started, and hosting a screening at Dee Dee the baber's shop -- Fade2Famous. After the screening, there will be a discussion lead by Dee Dee, Daralee Vazquez (Dee Dee’s sister), Quentin Walcot (Connect NYC) and Raid. The event will be filmed and will serve as an example of ways films can be used outside of theaters and in the community. For more information and to RSVP, visit the
Facebook event.

Saturday, January 30th 8:30pm at Fade2Famous (213 Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn)

Adventures in Photoshop

Dan Katz, who was one of the editors of Wet Dreams and False Images just sent this explorations in photoshop link:

http://www.celebuzz.com/celebs-what-if-they-fat-g153311/

POWER WRITERS chime in

Truly awesome poets from Power Writers respond in writing:

Looking at Me
by Patricia Holman

My heart is beating slowly
To the rhythm of silence
And for once, I can finally say…
I am AT PEACE

There’s nothing to distract me
It’s just me
My journal, and
The craftiness of my pen

I look out towards my window
Trynna find some inspiration
Instead I see my cousin and his buddies
On the street

I redirect my vision
To the page below my hand
This is MY TIME
And I will not let any foolishness
Take control of me,
Let alone my mind

I look up towards the ceiling
Hoping maybe I’d see a vision
The vision that I make out
Is a vision of me
It’s what I wanna be

Without a blemish on my face
My skin looks like chocolate
My eyes are light brown
And there’s a dimple on each cheek

Check out my circumference
Which is lined with baby hair
Long locks to my breasts
Just a hint of grey hair

There’s a mole upon my shoulder
And my tits are perfectly round
My nipples just right
Not too hard, not too soft

Heading deeper to my core
My abs have the perfect 4 pack
My body like a coke bottle
Big across the top
Coming in around the middle

Now take a look at my behind
Lord knows, that thang is juicy
Nice and firm, with enough curve
To put a drink on it

My hips a 42
Check the swagga, when I sway
I make wide turns
So I put my signal on
Like a Mack truck

Put your face into my pocketbook
There’s not a stitch of hair nowhere
It’s like you’re on the Moon
There’s not a sign of life anywhere

My thighs are the thickest
You can’t but wanna taste ‘em
Like a milkshake
You couldn’t suck me through a straw

Talkin’ about suckin’
Face your eyes upon my toes
10 little piggies
Without a bunion or a corn
All in alignment

This is what I wish I could be
What I wish you could see
What I wish was me

But it’s not me…

The debate continues....

NY Times:
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: December 2, 2009
AIRBRUSH WITH THE LAW Valérie Boyer has proposed legislation in France that would require that all digitally altered photographs of people used in advertising be labeled as retouched.

---
Point, Shoot, Retouch and Label?

VALÉRIE BOYER is 47, a member of the French parliament and a divorced mother of three. She is tall, fashionable and, dare we say it, slim.

But she has also created a small furor here and abroad with her latest proposal: a draft law that would require all digitally altered photographs of people used in advertising be labeled as retouched.

Some think such a law would destroy photographic art; some think it might help reduce anorexia; some say the idea is aimed at the wrong target, given that nearly every advertising photograph is retouched. Others believe such a label might sensitize people to the fakery involved in most of the advertising images with which they’re bludgeoned.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/fashion/03Boyer.html?_r=1

More on the Effects of Altered Images

NY TIMES
By Randy Cohen

Many comments on yesterday’s post argue that the problems associated with radically altered images of women should be solved not by their producers but by their consumers, asserting that the latter must take “personal responsibility” (Nos. 4 and 19, for instance) or simply avoid these products and publications (Nos. 39 and 57, among others). Others assert that the only people affected by such images are “stupid” (No. 43), lack “brains” (No. 40) or are not “sane” (No. 20).

I agree that it is incumbent on us all to be informed and skeptical, and not just in response to advertising. But it is futile to rely on the critical thinking of even the most astute and determined consumer.

READ MORE...

The Video Op-Ed is also linked with the article

Should Photos Come With Warning Labels?

NY Times Article By Randy Cohen

A Ralph Lauren ad, featuring a model with hips narrower than her head — so cartoonish, so grotesque, so right for Halloween — has become the latest focus of the already ongoing criticism of digitally altered fashion spreads, even though it ran only in Japan. Foes see such images as harming women by promoting a standard of beauty so false that it can be achieved solely by manipulating a photograph of an already slender model. This image is an extreme example of what happens to many ads, a practice that has become so dubious that some governments are taking action. Should ads using electronically altered images be banned?....

Read More...

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I obviously have some opinions about this. Easier for me to express them through film/ video.

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

The last few minutes of Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change
http://blogactionday.com/

Here's a link to some good info about climate change and public health:
http://chge.med.harvard.edu/index.html