This Is My Body: A Film by High School Girls

Being a girl in contemporary Western culture means having to wrestle with self-esteem and body image issues, a struggle articulated by several girls aged 9-16 in this student-directed film produced by Leanne Levy, Ph. D. Loosely organized into topics such as eating disorders, cutting, sexuality, and dealing with parents, This Is My Body features the girls filming themselves as they speak quite candidly about their experiences, ranging from interacting with boys to pursuing the never-ending quest to be skinny. The film is the result of a one-year media literacy/film production course at an all-girls high school in Montreal, and given the fact that the filmmakers are amateurs, the camerawork can be nauseatingly shaky, the framing/lighting is often terrible, the editing is minimal, and sometimes the image and audio are completely disjointed (such as a scene of a generic street corner as a girl talks about purposefully cutting her face with a kitchen knife). However, the raw comments here carry the ring of authenticity as the common struggles faced by pre-teens and teens are explored, with viewers ultimately being taught that it is both healthy and necessary to be emotionally honest with one's self. A strong optional purchase. Aud: H, P. (E. Gieschen)