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Beauty Mark
Body Image & the Race for Perfection (Educational Edition)
DVD PricingCollege and University: $250.00
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View a Full-Length PreviewLow-resolution preview is strictly for purchase consideration. Not for classroom use.
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Discounted PricingHigh School, Comm. College, Nonprofit: $150
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Digital LicenseLogged in Colleges/Universities may purchase online.
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Beauty Mark
Body Image & the Race for Perfection (Educational Edition)
A film by Diane Israel, Carla Precht & Kathleen Man | A She-Art Production
How do our families influence our relationship with our own bodies? How do American pop culture's standards of beauty get inside our hearts and heads? In what ways can sport and the drive for fitness actually make us sick rather than healthy?
In this courageous, deeply personal new film, Diane Israel examines American culture's toxic emphasis on thinness, beauty, and physical perfection. Israel, a Boulder-based psychotherapist and former champion triathlete, talks candidly about her own struggle with eating disorders and obsessive exercising, fearlessly confronting her own painful past as she tries to come to terms with American culture's unhealthy fixation on self-destructive ideals of beauty and competitiveness.
The film lends context to Israel's personal odyssey with fascinating insights from athletes, body builders, fashion models, and inner-city teens, as well as prominent cultural critics and authors such as Eve Ensler, Paul Campos, and Naomi Wolf. In a special bonus feature, Israel talks in detail about where she is in her recovery 2 years after the filming of Beauty Mark.
Beauty Mark is a classroom edition (produced by Carla Precht in association with MEF) of Diane Israel, Carla Precht, and Kathleen Man's 75-minute documentary film by the same title (a She-art Production in association with Salmon Pictures).
A study guide is currently in development.
For additional resources and information, visit the film's website: www.beautymarkmovie.com
Sections: Introduction | Racing Her Heart Out | A Distorted Mindset | Mayhem | Searching for Beauty | Re-Imagining Beauty | Going Home
Filmmaker Info
Executive Producer: Diane IsraelProducer: Carla Precht & Diane Israel
Assistant Producer: Julia Andersen
Director: Carla Precht & Kathleen Man
Editor: Kathleen Man & Daniel Brothers
Written by: Carla Precht & Diane Israel
Cinematographer: Edgar Boyles, Tim Fenoglio, Kathleen Man, Stephanie Martin, Kevin McLaughlin, Tarina Reed, Roger Sherman, Justin Whiteman
Post-Production Supervisor: Kathleen Man
Sound Editor & Mixer: Patrick Selvage
Filmmaker's Bio
DIANE ISRAEL | Executive Producer, Co-Producer, Co-Writer, Founder of SheArt LLCDiane Israel was a very successful professional triathlete and runner for 15 years. She was the 1984 Colorado mountain running champion and a world-class racer whose achievements included winning the bronze medal at the Maccabiah Games in Israel. After retiring from professional competition, she became a psychotherapist specializing in domestic violence with offenders. Diane is a professor in transpersonal psychology at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She is also a senior counselor at Women's Quest, a mind-body-spirit adventure camp for women and the co-owner of a Gyrotonic movement studio. A recovering athletic bulimic, Diane counsels people in physical, mental and spiritual integration. She has made it her mission to provide strong support and guidance for others in the areas of body image, nutrition and rekindling life's passions and direction. Diane is the founder of SheArt LLC, the production company behind Beauty Mark.
CARLA PRECHT | Co-Producer, Co-Director, Co-Writer
Carla Precht was Diane's neighbor growing up in Scarsdale, NY. She has spent the last 30 years running New York City educational, advocacy and social service programs and agencies that primarily served low-income families and children. She was Executive Director of a settlement house in the Bronx from 1990-2000, and is currently the Executive Director of an academic enrichment program called Horizons and the Director of the community service programs at Brooklyn Friends School. Carla is now Diane's booking agent as well as outreach coordinator for the Beauty Mark film. She is the mother of two children, a writer, an advocate for human rights, a trainer in the school-age care profession and a nonprofit management consultant. Carla's passion for equality and justice, and her love of art, have propelled her into the world of film.
KATHLEEN MAN | Co-Director, Co-Editor, Post-Production Supervisor
Kathleen Man is an independent filmmaker whose films have shown in festivals around the world. She won the Yale Film Prize as a film studies major at Yale University, and received an M.F.A. in Film Production at the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her award-winning French-language short, "L'Entretien (The Interview)," was produced during her tenure as a Fulbright Fellow in France. Kathleen produced and shot "Kind of a Blur," starring Golden Globe winner Sandra Oh. "Blur" was invited to 25 top international festivals in 2005-6, winning Best Comedic Film at the San Francisco International Festival of Short Films. "Sita, a Girl from Jambu," a documentary on child sex trafficking in Nepal, was an official selection at over 30 film festivals and won 7 awards in 2006-7, including Best Feature Film in the Children's Advocacy Category at the Artivist Film Festival and the Audience Award at the San Diego Women Film Festival. Kathleen is a professor of film production at Vassar College, where she teaches narrative and documentary filmmaking.
Film Festivals
2009 National Council of Jewish Women's Annual Women's Film Festival2008 PSBT Open Frame International Film Festival & Forum, New Delhi, India
2008 Estes Park Film Festival
2008 Moondance International Film Festival
2008 Boulder International Film Festival
Awards
Audience Choice Award | 2008 Estes Park Film FestivalAudience Choice Award | 2008 Moondance International Film Festival
Related Links
Click here to see an extensive list of organizations, books, and articles to provide you with resources to accompany Beauty Mark.Press Reviews
"This compelling documentary recounts the personal journey of Diane Israel, a psychotherapist and former champion triathlete, from anorexia and obsessive exercising to recovery. From her love of running as a child through her obsession with thinness as a teen and young adult, Israel describes how her health deteriorated through the pursuit of physical perfection. Featuring testimony from Israel and other athletes with body-image issues, the film explores eating and obsessive exercise disorders and the standards of beauty in our American culture. The athletes talk about of exercise, the avoidance of food, and bulimic behavior as weight-control tactics. Diane Israel is now a psychotherapist devoted to helping others by expanding their view of beauty and body image. She talks with a class of teens about body image to help them learn to accept themselves. Experts discuss re-imaging the concept of beauty. While the concentration is on women's body issues, concerns common to both sexes are covered. An inspiring film for health classes, sports teams, and professional development."- School Library Journal
Praise for the Film
"A fresh, honest film about self-image and the disconnect between our minds and our bodies. Beauty Mark exposes the myriad emotional, cultural, and psychological influences that compel us to measure ourselves against an elusive standard of physical perfection -- sometimes at the price of our own health. Full of wisdom, hope, and humor."- Lois Dino | Associate director of programming, Jacob Burns Film Center
"In this honest, thoughtful, courageous film, Diane Israel and Carla Precht speak to the seductiveness of the beauty and thinness culture and the dire consequences experienced by those who are taken in by it. With eloquent voices, we hear women and men speak of their difficult, but rewarding, journeys when they choose authenticity and define their lives and their selves from the inside out."
- Dr. Brenda Alpert Sigall | Clinical Psychologist & Director, Eating Disorders Program at University of MD Counseling Center
"Beauty Mark is an inspiring and powerful documentary that reveals how difficult it is for many female athletes to have a genuinely healthy, joyful relationship with their bodies. We applaud Diane Israel for telling her poignant story. The movie beautifully reveals the factors that ended her career as a triathlete and the indomitable passion that has enabled Diane to regain her health and her love of athletics and to become the role model she is today."
- Marjorie Snyder | Women's Sports Foundation
"This is one of the most effective and powerful films I have come across in the past 20+ years of teaching high school health. I had a GREAT response to it with my students. The complexity of issues and the presentation of the material provided me with ample opportunities to develop discussions and activities with my students. I am so thankful to have this tool to use with my students. I highly recommend it for high school and college use."
- Nancy Becerra | Health Teacher at Horace Greeley High School
"The showing of Beauty Mark for our professional development day was a spectacular success! Our district superintendent summed it up well: "Beauty Mark is a liberation of the soul: It's not just about eating disorders, it's about all of us." Many of the 81 guidance counselors, school psychologists, social workers, health teachers, school nurses, gym teachers, and coaches who came are still ranting and raving about the film. It was wonderful to have the co-producers, Diane Israel and Carla Precht, there too. It was a truly awesome event that deeply impacted every participant. Beauty Mark and its creators have begun a speaking/screening circuit that is the best-case format for any high school or college."
- Susan Lesser | Special Projects at Arlington Central School District
"Beauty Mark is a powerful and poignant film that will resonate with anyone who has ever had issues with food, exercise, or body acceptance. Our students from the Five College Consortium in western Massachusetts were noticeably moved by the honest, compelling story of one woman's struggle and eventual recovery from obsessive exercising and anorexia. Beauty Mark explores in a very authentic way the concepts of athletic excellence and competition, perfection, and beauty. It is touching and it is inspirational."
- Ellen Perrella | Head Athletic Trainer at Mount Holyoke College | Coordinator of the West Massachusetts Five College ED Task Force
"Beauty Mark is a real gem. It is a unique, personal, insightful and powerful film. You have created a film which can touch both the mind and the heart."
- Bill Baker | Former Chief Executive Officer, Thirteen/WNET New York
"... A great way to start out National Eating Disorders Awareness Week."
- Erin Hurley | Men's and Women's Swim Coach at Grinnell College
"I was so intensely moved by watching Beauty Mark -- I had no words. It hit home with me on many different levels -- as a guidance counselor, daughter, mother, human... It gave me so much to think about and to use every day. I really thank you for sharing it."
- Amy D. | Guidance Counselor at Arlington High School
"Beauty Mark is a vulnerable and complex journey story -- not just about one woman, but about us all. She has the courage and determination to ask the tough questions -- how do our families influence our relationships with our own bodies? How does the culture get inside of our hearts and heads? In what ways do sports serve to make us sicker instead of healthier? How can we possibly get back to self-love? Soul-baring interviews with inspiring change-makers, innovative shoots at a mannequin factory and a spinning class, and great music round out this highly original documentary. Beauty Mark has the power to make you slow down in a life of unconscious racing."
- Courtney E. Martin | Author, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body
"Diane Israel's Beauty Mark really leaves its own mark on the viewer as it reveals the intricacies, complexities and often anguish of living through an eating disorder. She has opened her heart and mind to us in a very thoughtful, inviting and provocative way that humanizes the story of the journey toward recovery as she warmly touches the soul."
- Lynn Grefe | Chief Executive Officer, National Eating Disorders Association
"This is very much an honest, sensitive and balanced production. The insight into Diane's personal journey is particularly strong. What I really like is that the film does not jump to a trite "here are 10 things to do" type solution. Instead it communicates that this is not an easy issue to resolve. This is a thoughtful, responsible film with a clear message delivered via a powerful personal testimony."
- Martin Staniforth | Dove Self-Esteem Fund
"Beauty Mark tells Diane Israel's compelling story honestly and openly, and acts as a powerful medium for bringing an important social issue to the public forum. This film is not only moving, but is an immensely effective tool for generating discussion and understanding the underlying issues that can contribute to the development of an eating disorder. No teenager -- or their parents, teachers, coaches, and anyone else who loves or works with them -- should miss it."
- Natalie Peck | Co-Chair, Jewish Women's Foundation of New Jersey
"I watched Beauty Mark twice -- once as a 'person' and once as a psychologist. As I watched the first part (sports/exercise focus), I was saying to myself, 'My athlete-patients need to see this.' As I finished the film, I was saying to myself, 'All my patients need to see this.' It was painfully, yet beautifully, personal. This is clearly one of the best films, if not the best, that I have seen on the topic. It is both informative and interesting.... This film is a true 'beauty mark' for this field."
- Ron A. Thompson | Psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders | Author, Helping Athletes with Eating Disorders
