For someone who isn\u2019t an avid short film watcher, it was somewhat surprising that the documentary \u201cBootyful World\u201d and comedy \u201cGood Luck in Her Eye\u201d could encapsulate their respective stories with the ultimate message of female empowerment in under 30 minutes and give it justice.
\nThese films were a part of September’s LA Shorts Fest 2007, which ran in Burbank, CA, and is the largest festival of its kind worldwide with accreditation from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
\n\u201cBootyful\u201d and \u201cGood Luck\u201d have a similar message and are from Israeli-born Jewish American filmmakers Avital Levy and Tamar Kagan, respectively. However, the two subject matters couldn\u2019t be more different. While director Levy offers a look at the evolution of pop culture and butts with the likes of rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot\u2019s iconic song \u201cBaby Got Back\u201d (phrases include: \u201cI like big butts and I cannot lie\u201d) and the Brazilian Butt Lift surgery, Kagan\u2019s film, which she co-starred in, co-wrote and executive produced, follows a woman debating on whether to follow her heart to a non-Jewish man or her parents’ desire for a co-religionist mate.<\/p>\n
For someone who isn\u2019t an avid short film watcher, it was somewhat surprising that the documentary \u201cBootyful World\u201d and comedy \u201cGood Luck in Her Eye\u201d could encapsulate their respective stories with the ultimate message of female empowerment in under 30 minutes and give it justice. These films were a part of September’s LA Shorts Fest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nSo, why make a documentary about the booty? \u201cThe short answer is I thought it was funny,\u201d says Levy, a recent graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Her longer answer has three parts: her curiosity about the butt lift surgery; being raised in Boston she was surprised how many people, especially men, commented positively about the butt; and ultimately how women were viewing themselves in relation to their bottoms.
\nLevy explores the matter with those in front and behind the camera of the hip-hop industry, a professor, a journalist, a plastic surgeon, a butt-lift patient, a costume historian, a photographer and art director, an actress, a model and people on the street to learn that beauty standards have shifted and a big butt is acceptable.
\nExploration and acceptance are also factors in Kagan\u2019s semi-autobiographical story in \u201cGood Luck.\u201d Kagan portrays Hannah, a twenty-something monogamous dater of co-religionists, who is between relationships when she falls in love with a sports doctor. She thinks he is Jewish but is terrified to learn the doctor has a German Christian background. While the specifics in Hannah’s and Kagan\u2019s respective life stories are different, both believed at one point that they must marry a Jewish man or risk breaking their parents\u2019 heart.
\nKagan isn\u2019t exactly sure why she has carried the pressure of fulfilling this desire attributed to her parents, if it is something they requested, she assumed or an influence of attending the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco when she was growing up.
\n\u201cThere was a lot of influence as I was becoming my own person,\u201d says the NYU Tisch School of Arts graduate. \u201cI struggled with that push forward: \u2018Who am I? Do I really want this or is this something that I\u2019m told to do and that\u2019s why I\u2019m doing it?\u2019\u201d
\nIn the end, Hannah figures out what is good for her \u2014 as Kagan has in real-life, where she is happy with supportive parents and a relationship with a non-Jew.
\nUltimately, Kagan and Levy have high hopes that audiences end up being open to the various possibilities in life and the changing definition of beauty and find ease in that.
\n\u201cI just hope people feel comfortable in their own skin,\u201d Levy says.
\nI am taking the filmmakers\u2019 messages to heart, as well as an appreciation for the short film genre. I also agree with Kagan about short films becoming their own media, being a calling card for young filmmakers and garnering more attention with multiple festivals focused on them.
\n\u201cI think they get industry attention and people do pay attention because the short filmmaker is tomorrow\u2019s feature filmmaker,\u201d she says. \u201cHopefully, one begets the other.\u201d
\nIn Kagan and Levy\u2019s cases, I believe it will.
\n-written by Sara Shereen Bakhshian<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"