Directed by Bernadette Wegenstein & Geoffrey Alan Rhodes • Documentary • 2007 • 65 minutes
In the age of surgically enhanced beauty and reality television, how do we perceive body image? MADE OVER IN AMERICA combines the style of reality television with experimental film to weave together the voices of producers and consumers, surgeons and their patients, clinical psychologists, media theorists, and youth who are coming of age in a culture where bodies seem to be customizable. Together they form a picture of how the desire for a better self operates within consumer culture and how this desire is fed by media, the makeover industry and culture at large. Among those in the film are Cindy, a San Diego housewife who felt ugly all her life until she was made over in the first season of FOX's show The Swan, a plastic surgery makeover show; The Swan producer Nely Galan, who says she invented the show to empower women; Cathy, a 21-year-old college student who dreams of carving her own belly into a six pack and her roommate's nose and bottom down to average size; Beverly Hills celebrity cosmetic surgeon and artist Dr. Randal Hayworth, who uses the metaphor of Michelangelo carving beauty from marble to describe his instinctual approach to surgery; and maxillo-facial surgeon and beauty expert Dr. Stephen Marquardt, who has become famous for analyzing beauty according to a mathematically proportionate grid to which all beautiful faces conform. MADE OVER IN AMERICA includes archival material on child development, actual plastic surgery procedures, art video and collage montages showing popular imagery, combined with powerful stories of how far Americans will go to fit in, showing the power of media in shaping ideas of beauty. "Looks at the wide range of plastic surgery options, while also exploring how the practice has become a major element in popular culture... a collage...
Directed by Meema Spadola & Thom Powers • Documentary • 1999 • 55 minutes
Men spend a lot of time thinking about their penises, and even thinking with their penises. But rarely do we hear men talking honestly about their penises-until now.
Surveying young and old, gay and straight, large an...
Directed by Olivier Jourdain • Documentary • 2017 • 60 minutes
"If a lot of water flows, the town will be flooded. The water company can close down. We have all the water we need." —Fanny, guest on Flash-FM in Rwanda Vestine Dusabe is a radio host and sex educator with a mission: promoting sexua...
Directed by Jean-Baptiste Peretie • Documentary • 2015 • 52 minutes
They're lurid, obnoxious, disdainful and explicit. And we love them - and love to hate them. SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS! charts the rise and fall of tabloid papers in the UK and US, including the New York Post, The Sun, and notoriou...