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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 educational version of the film, Diane Israel examines American culture’s unhealthy fixation 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 attempts to come to terms with American culture’s unhealthy fixation on self-destructive ideals of beauty and competitiveness.

This educational version of 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 greater detail about her recovery.

***** Beauty Mark: Body Image & the Race for Perfection is an educational edition for use in the classroom of Carla Precht, Kathleen Man, and Diane Israel’s film of the same title. *****

For additional resources and information, visit the film’s official website: http://www.beautymarkmovie.com

Duration : 0:1:44

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directed & edited by Calvin Sun. This is the updated trailer for upcoming event discussing specifically Asian American body image, beauty standards, eating disorders, and unspoken pressures to be thin in both American and Asian cultures. An otherwise taboo subject to talk about among specifically Asian Americans, students at Columbia University are now tired of keeping mum about the issue and are speaking out.

Produced by Aretha Choi & Marilla Li.

Directed & edited by Calvin Sun.

For more information, please contact aaa@columbia.edu

Duration : 0:1:58

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Directed and edited by Calvin Sun. Produced by Aretha Choi, Marilla Li, and Calvin Sun.

***WINNER of the audience favorite “One to Watch Award” in the longest running Asian American film festival in the world; the 30th Annual Asian American International Film Festival!!!***

Director’s Note:

We do NOT intend to show that issues like anorexia and bulimia are specifically Asian American problems. We instead wanted people to see that Asian Americans teenagers struggle with eating disorders just like any other American.

It has been a phenomenon that issues such as eating disorders has been an extremely taboo subject among Asian Americans who come from more conservative backgrounds.

We also must reveal the contradiction of how Asian American girls are pressured in this society to look both “western” and “Asian.”

This includes pressures on how many Asian American girls are supposed to play up this well-known image of looking innocent, weak, and petite as “attractive”, but at the same time mainstream media depicts Asian American females as alluring, “exotic,” and sexy.

We want to show that some are finally speaking out on the issue.

–

Part 2 of 2 in a film discussing the Asian American opinion on female body image, beauty standards, eating disorders, and unspoken pressures to be thin in both American and Asian cultures.

An otherwise taboo subject to talk about among specifically Asian Americans, students at Columbia University are now tired of keeping mum about the issue and are speaking out.

This video does not aim to cover every single ground regarding the topic; instead it seeks to begin dialogue with a generalized approach to the problems as a first step. We want first to show that Asian Americans are like any other American struggling with issues of body image while at the same time facing pressures coming from their own respective cultures.

This video certainly focuses on the former point; We hope that the latter will be explored more in the future.

We also hope that the people in this video will inspire others around the world to undertake similar projects that would focus deeper into these issues regarding body image and perhaps more specifically Asian American body image.

Therefore, this is only the beginning.

Produced by Aretha Choi & Marilla Li.

Directed & edited by Calvin Sun.

For more information, please contact aaa@columbia.edu

Dedicated to my father,
Alexander S. Sun
1939-2006

calvin.sun@columbia.edu

Duration : 0:9:41

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Directed and edited by Calvin Sun. Produced by Aretha Choi, Marilla Li, and Calvin Sun.

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XWQ62HdCs

***WINNER of the audience favorite “One to Watch Award” in the longest running Asian American film festival in the world; the 30th Annual Asian American International Film Festival!!!***

This is part 1 of 2 in a film discussing the Asian American opinion on female body image, beauty standards, eating disorders, and unspoken pressures to be thin in both American and Asian cultures.

An otherwise taboo subject to talk about among specifically Asian Americans, students at Columbia University are now tired of keeping mum about the issue and are speaking out.

This video does not aim to cover every single ground regarding the topic; instead it seeks to begin dialogue with a generalized approach to the problems as a first step. We want first to show that Asian Americans are like any other American struggling with issues of body image while at the same time facing pressures coming from their own respective cultures.

This video certainly focuses on the former point; We hope that the latter will be explored more in the future.

We also must reveal the contradiction of how Asian American girls are pressured in this society to look both “western” and “Asian.”

This includes pressures on how many Asian American girls are supposed to play up this well-known image of looking innocent, weak, and petite as “attractive”, but at the same time mainstream media depicts Asian American females as alluring, “exotic,” and sexy.

We hope that the people in this video will inspire others around the world to undertake similar projects that would focus deeper into these issues regarding body image and perhaps more specifically Asian American body image.

Therefore, this is only the beginning.

Produced by Aretha Choi & Marilla Li.

Directed & edited by Calvin Sun.

For more information, please contact aaa@columbia.edu

Dedicated to my father,
Alexander S. Sun
1939-2006

calvin.sun@columbia.edu

Duration : 0:7:31

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