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A SheArt Production A film by Diane Israel, Kathleen Man
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BIOS THE FILMMAKERS | PEOPLE IN THE FILM | PHOTOGRAPHERS The Filmmakers
Diane Israel Diane 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. On making the film... Frustrated and exhausted by our culture's fixation with thinness and external beauty, I set out on a mission to understand this mania. After years of being a very driven and compulsive athlete, this became my new obsession. I wondered what our world would be like if all the energy and time we spent seeking fulfillment outside ourselves was turned toward helping others. Were there others who felt the way I did? With the guidance and support of my childhood neighbor, Carla Precht (who became my Co-Director), and other crew members, I was forced to see that I had to be willing to tell my own story if anyone would believe our film. I never imagined that my life would become a central thread to this story. With this film I hope to encourage each of you to ask yourself "what is my unique beauty?" I am learning that when we begin to live our own Uniqueness, that is Beauty Mark! —Diane Carla Precht 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. She is also establishing a foundation on behalf of the Yankees. 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. On making the film... I am honored to have had the opportunity to make this film with Diane, Kathleen, the cast, and the crew. As I started to work on the film and collect information about the beauty industry, it became clear to me that Diane was very self-conscious about her own body and she even confessed to me that she had been an anorexic as a child. I realized that Diane was still battling many of her childhood demons and I felt that this would make her a believable and sympathetic guide in the film. Fortunately, Diane trusted me as an old friend to interview her in depth, as well as other people who knew her, to develop this personal story, which became the backbone of Beauty Mark. To me, Beauty Mark illustrates how complex and layered the formation of our body image is, how our values mirror our culture, and how each of us has more choices than ever before as to how we model our lives. Our film is not meant to provide one definition of a body image disorder or a road map to overcoming a neurosis. It is just meant to give the audience something to think about and a place to begin talking honestly about these issues. Thank you Diane, and the Israel family, for being so courageous! — Carla Kathleen Man Kathleen Man is an independent filmmaker whose films have shown in festivals around the world. She received her B.A. in Film Studies from Yale and her M.F.A. in Film/Video Production from the University of Iowa. Her French-language film, L'Entretien (The Interview), was an Official Selection at over 20 international festivals in 2002-3, winning 3 awards. 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 in the film department at Vassar College, where she teaches narrative and documentary filmmaking. See http://www.salmonpictures.net/links.html On making the film... Joining the Beauty Mark team was a major moment in my life; Diane’s struggle spoke to me right from the beginning. This was an opportunity for me to contribute to a global dialogue about the way we view the body and how we yearn to relate to one another as human beings. We all come into this world encased in a fragile shell and spend most of our lives coming to terms with our mortal coil. Diane’s brave journey was an inspiration to me during the challenging process of constructing a 75-minute documentary from over 400 hours of footage. Thank you, Di and Carla, for the opportunity. — Kathleen Edgar Boyles Emmy Award-winning Edgar Boyles has filmed features, documentaries and commercials worldwide, from the jungles of the Amazon and the savannahs of Africa, to the bottom of Antarctica and the top of Mt. Everest. He shot the Academy Award-nominated Coors International Classic and was second-unit camera operator on Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It, which won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Edgar was Director of Photography on the Emmy Award-nominated films A Country in the Mind, End of the Game and High Altitude Physiology at Everest, which also won Best Documentary at the Telluride Film Festival. He shot the acclaimed Let’s Get Lost, a portrait of Chet Baker that won an International Monitor Award and Special Recognition at the Aspen Film Festival. His Yangtse River Expedition won Critic’s Choice at the Venice Film Festival. Edgar shot the Paul McCartney World Tour for Richard Lester and has shot for ABC, NOVA, the BBC and Discovery Channel, among others. He has been honored with the Golden Eagle Award for Special Achievement in Sports Cinematography. See http://www.wildwoodfilms.com Daniel Brothers Daniel Brothers began his film career as an assistant editor in the advertising world, but quit to pursue his love for editing documentary films. He has three such credits under his belt, including co-editor of Kathleen Man’s Sita, a Girl from Jambu. Current projects include Learn to Fish, a feature-length documentary examining aid workers in Nicaragua and Wasteland, another feature-length film criticizing consumerism and waste in North America. Confusion: My Epitaph is a folk-rock opera about a desperate gunslinger and a fanatical priest. Danny is the co-founder of SixDay Productions. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. See also http://www.danieljbrothers.com. Julia Andersen Julia Andersen was born and raised in Colorado, growing up in a small mountain town. Julia always had a love for storytelling, and has worked in film and video production for the last five years, contributing to music videos, commercials, documentaries and feature films. A few feature films she has worked on include Silver City by John Sayles, Throttle, Catch & Release and Looking for Sunday. Julia received her B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Colorado Denver, part of the Colorado Film School. She received the National Television Academy’s Scholarship award for writing a treatment for a television sitcom, which she gratefully accepted at the Regional Heartland Emmy Awards. She has created several short original films, as well as written several full-length screenplays. Julia is the founder of Rare Earth Productions, a production company with a mission to illustrate sustainability through their films.
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