The Illusionists

Synopsis

The Illusionists examines how global advertising firms, mass media conglomerates, and the beauty, fashion, and cosmetic surgery industries are changing the way people around the world define beauty and see themselves. Taking us from the halls of Harvard to the galleries of the Louvre Museum, from a cosmetic surgeon's office in Beirut to the heart of Tokyo's Electric Town, the film explores how these industries saturate our lives with narrow, Westernized, consumer-driven images of beauty that show little to no respect for biological realities or cultural differences.

The Illusionists features prominent sociologists, politicians, magazine editors, scientists, artists, and activists in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including: Susie Orbach, Jean Kilbourne, Gail Dines, Susan Linn, Laura Mulvey, Harrison Pope, Nadine Moawad, Ruchi Anand, Paola Audrey Ndengue, Tetsuya Ando, and Jason Karlin.

The full-length education version of the film (54 minutes) and an abridged version (43 minutes -- edited for language and content for younger viewers) are both included.

Release Date:2015

Duration:54 min (Full Version), 43 min (Abridged Version)

ISBN:1-944024-96-5

Subtitles:English

Trailers

Watch the trailer

Filmmaker Credits

Producer, Writer, Cinematographer & Editor

Elena Rossini

Original Music by

Pierre-Marie Maulini

Music Executive Producer

Olivier Linglet

Sound Design & Mix

Ludovic Jokiel

Film Editing & Motion Graphics

Elena Rossini

Supervising Editor

Laura Minnear

Filmmaker Biographies

Elena Rossini

Producer, Writer, Director, Cinematographer, Editor

Elena Rossini is a filmmaker, DP, photographer, multimedia producer, and blogger. At age 24, Elena worked as writer, producer, director, cinematographer, and editor on Dove Sei Tu, a feature-length narrative film set in between Milan, Lake Como, and Rome, Italy. Other notable film projects include the documentary short Direction, shot in Tokyo and Paris, and Ideal Women, a short documentary juxtaposing beauty ideals in the art world vs. mass media, commissioned by ARTE Web and the Louvre Museum. The film was screened at women's conferences in the United States and Argentina. In 2009, Elena launched a multimedia platform -- No Country for Young Women -- whose aim is to promote the visibility of professional women and to provide real role models for young girls. The site features over 100 interviews with women, ages 17 to 91, across five continents: from entrepreneurs to NASA engineers, illustrators, architects, filmmakers, non-profit directors, award-winning novelists, and more. In the summer of 2014, Elena co-founded Gender Gap Grader with Elian Carsenat -- a platform empowering companies and organizations with innovative tools to measure the gender gap. Elena also works as a freelance videographer, photographer, and writer. Her work has appeared on Corriere della Sera, Jezebel, indieWIRE, Adios Barbie, and Gender Across Borders. In 2014, Elena was selected for the prestigious Young Leaders program by the Council for the United States and Italy.

Screenings

Conference Screenings

Resources: Downloads and Related Links

Downloads:

Praise

"With unsettling visuals, damning examples, and interviews with the leading experts, The Illusionists reveals the capitalist impulses behind the intimidatingly high standard of beauty in the West and shows how corporations are bringing men, children, and the entire world into its destructive fold. If you're going to watch one documentary on the beauty-industrial complex, this should be it."

Lisa Wade
Associate Professor of Sociology, Occidental College

"The genius of this piece is in its simplicity. A revelatory primer on the global manipulation of perception and consumption, The Illusionists should be required viewing in every school – and possibly every home."

Joss Whedon
Film & TV director, screenwriter and producer (The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"As modern-day life gets increasingly connected to media and technology, it is vital that we understand how corporate marketers shape images of whom girls and women are and how they need to look. These practices make us need to buy, buy and buy more and more and endlessly try to look right but never quite succeed -- because the images we see are increasingly extreme and unattainable. This film will help women (and men) gain some of the resilience they need to resist the most extreme media messages marketed to them that promote consumer culture and undermine healthy gender development and relationships in these times."

Diane E. Levin
Professor of Education, Wheelock College

"This important film expands the critique of unattainable beauty to a global scale -- revealing how Western values continue to dominate media and consumer landscapes through neocolonial flows of corporate capital that marginalize entire populations. But perhaps The Illusionists' best trick will be getting students to wrestle with how ideology functions at the most intimate of levels by preying on their own insecurities."

Christopher Mark Boulton, PhD
Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Tampa

"The Illusionists teases apart complex ideas about power, consumerism and beauty, and leaves the viewer feeling enlightened and ready to make change. A valuable contribution to media literacy and body image education, this is an inspiring documentary with a unique global perspective!"

Claire Mysko
COO and interim CEO at the National Eating Disorders Association

"The Illusionists builds upon Jean Kilbourne's pioneering work and offers a brilliant -- and much-needed -- analysis of advertising at a global level. The film's focus on a global culture of ideal beauty exposes the power dynamics inherent in the desire for a Westernized image. And women are no longer the only targets. The film shows how advertising has turned to men for a new market: Fair, hairless skin and a six-pack are the new ideal for masculine desirability. The media literacy that The Illusionists encourages should be taught along with the basics so that children around the world have a fighting chance against the corporate-inspired conformity of a soul-dead consumer culture."

Denise H. Sutton, PhD
Author of Globalizing Ideal Beauty: Women, Advertising, and the Power of Marketing

"The Illusionists is an important reminder that Western ideals of beauty are increasingly permeating cultures all over the globe, disturbingly making damaging standards of thinness the norm. Rossini's film does much to combat this cross-generation epidemic of body dissatisfaction and should be required viewing for women of all ages."

- Julie Zeilinger
Founder & Editor of The FBomb
Author of A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism is Not a Dirty Word

"Intriguing and eye-opening"

Sharon Glynn, LPN
Director of Programming at the Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness

"This film is a must-see for adolescents and adults alike. It's a wake up call for all of us not only to be mindful of the insidious messages we are fed by media and corporations to sell their products and capitalize on our emotional vulnerabilities, but a call to action to stop the promotion of unrealistic and harmful beauty ideals. The film does a great job of highlighting the issues for boys and men, which is both refreshing and disturbing. The Illusionists offers hope, too. Just as the media is a channel for negative influences, it can also be harnessed to empower girls and boys, women and men, to revise these persistent and impossible beauty ideals and have constructive conversations around beauty, sex, power, self-worth and self-compassion."

Tara Cousineau, PhD
Clinical Psychologist
Founder of BodiMojo.com

"Elena Rossini has made a courageous, well-researched film with The Illusionists, making a clear link for viewers of how dysfunctional economies and predatory business practices create and reinforce harmful beauty cultures not just in the U.S., but around the world. Fearless in calling out various players in the fashion industry for their racism and use of body shaming to sell products, Rossini wakes us up to what we're actually doing to women and men alike, young women especially, in pursuit of an extremely narrow standard of beauty (white, Western and thin) and sexuality. I hope everyone sees this film, as it challenges all of us to grapple with the colonial, racist and sexist histories upon so many of our world economies are still based, and introduces us to the people who are working to change things for the better. Far from leaving us feeling hopeless, The Illusionists reminds us how as business leaders and consumers, we have power to change what kinds of companies and business practices we support."

Lex Schroeder
Writer & Director of Strategy & Partnerships at Take The Lead

“I’ve seen The Illusionists several times now and each day since, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, some part of the film will resonate with me. Whether it is a quote (“We’re losing bodies like we are losing languages”), a statistic (the amount of time we are currently exposed to media and will be exposed to media in the future), or just the simple understanding of the impact that mass media has on every single one of us, no matter how secure we are, I no longer look at advertisements the same. I have a better personal understanding of beauty versus glamour from this film and a better understanding of myself too. To have witnessed the impact that this film had on everyone who saw it was incredibly moving for me. I truly believe that I am a better social work practitioner as a result of the messages in The Illusionists.”

Rachael Abrams
Parent Outreach Specialist for Jewish Community Services

“Body image, health, consumer culture and societal and gendered expectations of beauty are all topics that are part of our daily lives. For young college students as well as older adults dealing with aging, I think the film touched a nerve or two with everyone in the audience. I think the impact was to get us thinking about our part in this conversation and what we can be doing for ourselves and our physical and mental well-being.”

Mahnoor Ahmed
Associate Director, Student Diversity and Development at Towson University

“The film took seven years to complete – seven years – and it shows. Elena produced an inspiring and touching film and introduced topics that I had never before thought about. I’ve seen the film five times and would see it 500 more.”

Ilana Posner, ifIknew.org

"As someone who is very involved in the conversation around body image after screening the movie, I can honestly state that The Illusionists is a game changer for opening up the body image conversation up to a world wide audience."

Brian Cuban
Author of Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder

"Brava to Rossini for skillfully offering the viewers of The Illusionists an outside lens from which we can clearly see the intentions and toxic effects of the multi-billion dollar global beauty and advertising industries. As we look in we feel the horror of consumer capitalism as it colonizes our minds and bodies and ruthlessly creates body hatred and insecurity all in the name of profit. We need look no further to understand why there is a mental health epidemic of people unable to comfortably live in their bodies."

Luise Eichenbaum
Co-founder of The Women's Therapy Centre Institute, NYC

Press Reviews

Jezebel

Documentary The Illusionists Tackles How Corporations Sell Beauty

Upworthy

Advertising Seems Harmless; Until You See It For What It Really Is

VOGUE Italia

Synopsis

Trailers

Filmmaker Credits

Filmmaker Biographies

Screenings

Conference Screenings

Resources: Downloads and Related Links

Downloads:

Praise

Press Reviews

Related Films

Title