ODY TYPED is series of award-winning short films that use humor to raise serious questions about the marketplace of commercial illusion and unrealizable standards of physical perfection.

WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES (12 min.) (Winner: Sundance Film Festival) When Dee-Dee the barber learns about the art of photo-retouching, he may never look at his “wall of beauty” the same way again.

THE GUARANTEE (11 min.) (Best Short Film: Newport International Film Festival) A dancer’s hilarious story about his prominent “Italian” nose and the effect it has on his career.

34x25x36 (8 min.) (National PBS Broadcast on POV) Mannequins, religion and perfection. Enter the inner workings of the Patina V Mannequin Factory and see what goes into making “the ideal woman of the moment” — in plastic.

BODY TYPED is used by educators and activists to engage audiences in creative ways, and is distributed through filmmaker owned & operated New Day Films. The films have screened in numerous film festivals, community centers, churches, high schools, colleges and universities -- and even barbershops!

CREDITS:
Directed and Produced by:
Jesse Epstein

Executive Producers:
Judith Helfand
Wendy Ettinger
Julie Parker Benello
Chicken & Egg Pictures

Produced in Association with:
The Fledgling Fund

Producers:
Jesse Epstein
Trish Dalton

Cinematographers:
Alan Jacobsen
Tracey Gudwin
Jesse Epstein
Antonio Cisneros
Leo Chaing
Christian Bruno

Editors:
Pete Slife
Jesse Epstein
Joshua Bee Alafia
Dan Katz
Jeremy Levine

Music:
T. Griffin
Ben Epstein

Sound:
Sound Lounge
Pat Christianson
Laura Hannah

Illustration:
Robert Castillo

Storytelling:
Charles Farruggio

Advisors:
Stephen Duncombe
Sam Pollard
John Sayles

Story Consultants:
Laura Hannah
Rose Rosenblatt

Special Thanks:
Dee Dee the Barber
Raid
Goose
Exile Ramirez
George Marin
Normin Glazer
Ken Harris
Domenic Demasi
Gavin Thomas
Susan Tremborlan
Natalie Difford
The Epstein Family
Patina V
Fade 2 Famous Barbershop
Chinagraph
Daralee Vazquez
Quentin Walcott
Yance Ford
Simon Kilmurry
Ingrid Kopp
Andrew Killoy
Laura Hayes
Diana Barrett
Sheila Leddy
Emily Verellen

The MacDowell Colony
The National Endowment for the Arts
The Sundance Institute
DCTV
Working Films
Mass MoCa
Filmmaker Magazine
New Day Films
Shooting People, Inc.
POV

Jesse Epstein remembers exactly when her life changed. It was when her awesome, and frugal, grandmother turned to her and said ‘Look, you could either inherit a bit of cash when I die, or I can spend it now and get you a camera.” Having “the means of production” changed everything.

For most of her life Epstein has been fascinated by the perception of beauty. Growing up in Boston, she moved to Mozambique for two years, where full-figured looks were celebrated. Moving back to the U.S., as a pre-teen, she was pretty confused about what the messages were. Without exception all of her American friends seemed obsessed with being skinny and pasted magazine cut-outs above their mirrors. So, she embarked on a journey to try to understand what was going on. Epstein enrolled in NYU Film School and decided to explore different issues surrounding body image. She is thrilled about the conversations that have already been raised by BODY TYPED and is very interested in hearing more about what people have to say about media, and physical perfection.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
What I love about short films is you can get in there, raise some questions, tell a little story and get out, leaving it all open for discussion. These films are meant to explore, ask questions, and start conversations. As a director, I am not interested in telling people that it is wrong to try to look beautiful, or to strive to be fit. But, I do mean to uncover how advertising is creating impossible standards, which no one is able to live up to in real life, expectations that if held onto, can prevent us from being truly happy in the bodies we live in. My goal is to expose the “man behind the curtain” or the artists behind the industry and to better understand how notions of perfection are constructed. But what happens when we meet the “man behind the curtain?” It’s easy to point fingers, but I believe this is a more complicated debate. We are all people doing this. Anthropologically, I wonder why are we creating perfect images of ourselves?

BIO: Jesse Erica Epstein is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker. She received an MA in documentary film from New York University. She was selected for “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by filmmaker magazine, and is the editor of the Shooting People, Inc. NY Filmmaker’s Network. She also works as a youth media educator, and for three years taught Reel Stories: Sundance’s Youth Documentary Lab. Jesse has also taught Girls Make Movies at the Girls Leadership Institute, and has a published New York Times Video Op-Ed “Sex, Lies and Photoshop.”

Her projects have received grants from Chicken & Egg Pictures, and the Fledgling Fund. She has also received a MacDowell Arts Colony Residency, sponsored by The National Endowment For the Arts.

Jesse also does speaking engagements with BODY TYPED at high schools, colleges and universities.