Thin

Award winning photographer, Lauren Greenfield, has been chronicling youth body image in both her photography exhibits and books. Both Girl Culture and Fast Forward deal with young people and what influences them.

This led her to film at the Renfrew Center in Florida and focus on 4 women who were in-patient for anorexia. This documentary was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Independent Film Festival of Boston, Newport International Film Festival and Jackson Hole Film Festival, where it played before coming to Vancouver’s International Film Fest.

She says, “Once everyone was on board, we just started, and it was really a day-by-day process of earning your access. I worked with a really small crew, and I made sure it was an all-female crew, and they sort of had to make their own relationships. With the film, my relationship with my subjects was so much more intense [than with photos]. It was because I was with this really small group of people over a long period of time; I spent 10 weeks there shooting over a 6 month period, so I lived there in a pretty extensive way.”

The first time filmmaker provides an unflinching look into the lives of a handful of women on the rocky road to recovery from an eating disorder. Or not. The women waffle back and forth from being cooperative at their daily weigh-ins, to breaking down at mealtime, and filled with attitude on the “smoke porch.”

“These are people in the midst of a life-and-death experience,” Lauren realtes. “It made it so that at points, it seemed like maybe this film couldn’t even be made.”

We are given full access to the inner dynamics of how a clinic works and the difficulty of keeping the patients honest and open within their secretive behaviour. Some of the most heartbreaking moments are those during meals, when the women break down at the site of all the food they’re required to eat or the drink supplements they must drink.

A big factor in the women’s lives is their insurance coverage. As it runs out, no matter where they are in recovery, they must leave the clinic and fend for themselves. Watching the frail, scared and sometimes angry figures walk out of the place where they feel most safe is a reminder of how many sick women live amongst us today, without the resources to pay for help.

Although their skeletal frames were shocking, with clothes and a little bit of make up on, they looked like the same women who could grace the cover of a magazine or walk down the runways. Their bones poked out just as models and actresses’ do in mainstream films. That frightened me the most.

The point during the film that affected me the most was when Brittany, 15 years old, breaks down in group therapy because she doesn’t want to get better anymore. She feels fat and sobs that all she wants is to be thin. The camera stays on her anguished face as she repeats again and again that all she wants is to be thin. Her honesty haunts the room and mirrors that of so many young women her age.

Lauren says, “I think I really didn’t understand what it was about and how it functioned. I kind of came there out of Girl Culture and out of our obsession with the body and body image, and when I was at the center, I saw it was a serious mental illness, an addiction, and a coping mechanism like drugs or alcohol, something girls used to numb their pain and hot have to deal with issues. I feel like I kind of came to it with more of a superficial take on it and discovered the heart of darkness.”

This film is a must-see for those who have been affected by disordered eating, and especially for those who know nothing about this deadly disease. If you missed screenings in your city, the film will air on HBO on November 14th, 2006.

Her accompanying book, also titled Thin, delves deeper into her study and is able to include more women.

You can buy the DVD at Amazon.com

You can buy the book at Amazon.com

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