/images/dot_clr.gif) FAT
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| julian dahl, eu topos productions LLC |
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| If fat is the new normal, why is fat discrimination on the rise? Follow the lives of three women struggling with fat and fat hatred. Learn the hidden facts about fat, food and health. Experience straight and gay fat folks happy and healthy in their own skin. Meet fat-but-formerly-thin Linnea and witness her transformation. See Jennifer, a 350-pound professional dancer on her way to love and self-acceptance. Discover how to become liberated and powerful in your own body. |
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| Treatment
After birthing 2 kids, formerly-thin Linnea Dahl, wife of filmmaker Julian Dahl, quickly gained 100 pounds. The scorn and discrimination she experienced from family, friends and even strangers in the street motivated the Dahls to find out why fat is so hateful to contemporary Americans. Enlisting the support of fat punk Rain and fat activist/dancer Jennifer, the Dahls embarked on a feature documentary to discover the nature of fat hatred and discrimination, the meaning of fat in America today, and the effects of fat on the human body. Linnea got a lap-band from a leading Mexican surgeon and lost those 100 pounds. Rain launched and investigation into fat, food and health. Jennifer learned how to be fat and proud and sexy in her own body, culminating in her performance as a 350-pound professional dancer in a gold lycra body suit. The film follows the personal stories of these 3 women as they strive to accept and be accepted by a skinny culture gone mad. Interspersed also are explorations of fat and health, big fat guys, fat sex, fat art, gay fat, as well as a portrait of fat hatred from sociological, psychological, and political perspectives from leading researchers, social commentators, activists, and academics, including Eric J Oliver (Fat Politics) William Ian Miller (An Anatomy of Disgust), Michael Gard (The Obesity Epidemic), Barbara Bruno (NAAFA board member and clinical psychologist), Peggy Elum (Health at Every Size Radio Show, clinical psychologist), Lesleigh Owen (fat activist and sociologist), and 500-pound fat model, Gabi Brown. In addition, viral YouTube fat activist Joy Nash contributes her Fat Rant series (over 2 million hits) and renowned comic Cocoa Brown mixes in her riffs on fat and skinny. Through the use of cyber interviews, studio interviews, elaborate re-enactments, poetic montages, actual fat hatred from cyberspace, fat art, explicit medical footage of lap band surgery, and laparoscopic footage of the entire alimentary canal from teeth to anus, this film embarks on an informative and viscerally compelling expose of being fat and hated in a thin world.
Concept
As civil rights legislation and public scorn has shrunk the scope of allowable social hatred, fat discrimination is revealed as a covert and continuing attack on women, the poor, and minorities. Discover the psychological and visceral core of hatred and fat fear as powerful cultural tropes dressed in junk science designed to make billions of people hate themselves and buy more products. Nutrition and activity make you healthy. Dieting makes you sick. Fat is healthier than skinny. And science has no business in this moral, aesthetic and cultural battlefield. The lines are drawn… and they are entirely arbitrary. What the fat majority needs now is social and self-acceptance.
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| Julian Dahl, multi-award-winning 13-year veteran Australian filmmaker with two recent releases by Vanguard Cinema (feature film, “Camjackers,” and shorts compilation, “Utopia One”); Jennifer Jonassen, dancer, actress, activist – has appeared in several films, series, commercials and dance performances with RAID (Random Acts of Irreverent Dance); Rain, fashion designer extraordinaire; Kevin Steamer, sound re-recording mixer/editor has been working in sound for 15 years, initially as a reconstruction expert for sound archives, then segueing into music CD mixing and mastering, and now working in music, film and sound design. |
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| FAT is an attempt to defend the right of people to live in their own skin, whatever shape, color, class, or sex it might be. FAT is also a celebration and appreciation of the beauty, taste and texture of fat. We intend to complete editing this summer and release to film festivals in the fall of 2010. We are seeking early media interest and festival awards in order to build our audience and marketing profile. (Both Julian and Jennifer have been actively cultivating the FAT audience since 2009 through Facebook, myspace, twitter, blogs, YouTube and a website). In early 2011, we will embark on a cross-country screening tour in order to build grassroots awareness and enlist passionate supporters as marketing reps. By summer 2011, with a full press book and an objectively verifiable audience, we will seek sale of distribution rights. FAT will be released on DVD, with further sale of streaming, download, domestic cable and international rights. Limited theatrical may be contemplated if early returns are very strong. In addition a book from the interviews is already in manuscript form and a CD of fat-celebratory songs is already licensed. We intend to begin the FAT revolution and impel fat folks to be loved, to love themselves, and to be accepted by wider society as the worthy majority that they are. Fat is in and thin is out as we take on the last bastion of socially approved discrimination in our time. |
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| Right now our budget is $10,000, which has been self-financed over a 3-year period. We can edit the film with no additional resources. We are seeking a further $15,000 for: publicity, festival applications, digital mastering costs, screening tour, new website design, travel expenses, office and communications expenses. Deferred costs, almost entirely payable from Producer’s Net, include music licensing (approximately $25,000), sound editing/re-recording mixing/music supervision ($9000), and clip licensing (profit sharing up to 9% of Producer’s Net).
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