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 THE
BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL, SHOT WITH PANASONIC AJ-SDX900,
HAS WORLD PREMIERE AT TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Tribute to the Human Spirit Is Entered in Documentary
Competition
SECAUCUS, NJ (May 5, 2004) – The Beauty Academy
of Kabul, director Liz Mermin’s remarkable chronicle
of female grace under extreme pressure, enjoys its world
premiere this week at the Tribeca Film Festival, where
it is entered into the Documentary Competition. Beauty
Academy, shot in Afghanistan with Panasonic’s AJ-SDX900
DVCPRO Cinema™ camcorder, was produced by Noble
Enterprises (New York, NY), with Lynda Hall as Director
of Photography.
 This engrossing, 74-minute film documents an unusual
and ultimately very moving cultural exchange: a group
of volunteer women, comprised of both Americans and Afghan-Americans,
recently traveled to that country to teach beauty skills.
In Kabul, where such trades had been practiced in secret,
so many candidates turned up that a lottery system had
to be instituted. Many of them were women who had led
desperate lives for years. The film plays witness to
their growing self-confidence. Perhaps more surprisingly,
it observes how the emotional interactions between Afghan
and Western women led to healing and spiritual transformation
on both sides, and proves that sisterhood can transcend
national boundaries.
 Liz Mermin is a New York-based director, producer, and
editor. Her first documentary feature, On Hostile Ground
(1999), made with Jenny Raskin, was released theatrically
before airing on the Sundance Channel. Her recent television
work includes Report from Ground Zero, ABC's anniversary
special about the World Trade Center attacks, for which
she was a producer and editor, and Parking Lot, a six-part
series about fan culture, which she produced and edited
for Trio.
"I knew very little about Afghanistan and even less about
beauty school when I came across a story about an American-funded
beauty academy in post-Taliban Kabul," Mermin recalled. "I
found the story irresistible: it was controversial, inherently
aesthetic, and dealt with a part of the world which we
need to try to understand. Our standard vision of Afghan
women--oppressed, hidden, tormented--isn't entirely wrong,
but it's terribly narrow. The seriousness with which
the students took hair and makeup amidst such tremendous
destruction and poverty seemed, at first, anomalous;
but one of the many tragedies of war is the suppression
of the ordinary things that make life entertaining."
The choice of the AJ-SDX900 DVCPRO Cinema™ camcorder
was made by Mermin and her co-producer Nigel Noble, himself
a filmmaker. The director said, "Because this is
a film about beauty, I wanted it to be beautiful. I didn’t
want it to look like video, and I didn’t want to
have to wait till the end and process it to give it a
film look, especially as we were making multiple versions
and might not have bothered processing the television
versions. We felt that the SDX900 could shoot landscapes
with detail, could capture the light and the dust, and
the colors of the location. The native 16x9 was also
an important factor in our decision."
 Noble
added, "For Beauty Academy, we wanted a theatrical,
studied look - not your typical hand-held documentary
style. 24p made sense, as we anticipated that there would
be a theatrical release as well as broadcast airings.
Originally, we looked at the AG-DVX100 mini-DV 24p camcorder,
but we were concerned about dynamic range; because of
the inherent confines of the Afghan society, we expected
many of the shoots would be curtained and dark, and we
wanted more range.
"I’d heard excellent reports about the SDX900, so
I demo-ed it at Abel Cine Tech (New York, NY), and was
so impressed with its light handling ability and range
of options that I purchased it for Beauty Academy and
future projects. The results were simply spectacular.
As good as the current crop of mini-DV camcorders is,
I feel that to some extent they’ve dumbed down
the audience’s desire to see beautiful images.
Not so with the SDX900—the images are intrinsically
filmic, and have the gentleness this work requires. The
women’s very arresting faces don’t look like
video. The images are totally engrossing, including the
high-definition blow-up, which is quite extraordinary.
Nobel said that a 59-minute version of the documentary
will air on the BBC2 network in late August, and that "the
transfer to PAL looks beautiful." The producer
plans to use the SDX900 for an upcoming documentary on
a Senegalese dance band, as well as for concert videos.
DP Hall said, "I liked the idea of 24p and was
happy with the look I was getting through the viewfinder--much
more pleasing on the eye than Digi Beta, and more film-like
as I'd hoped. It's great that you can achieve a more
filmic look with the portability and convenience of tape."
"
The
AG-DVX100 was used on Beauty Academy as a second camera. "We
shot with the DVX100 when we were in tight quarters (cars),
when we had to be
very mobile or discreet (walking through a crowded
market), or in a big scene where we wanted a second
camera," Mermin said. "With a blow-up to
match the 16x9 it integrated fine – and it held
up pretty well to the blow-up. The material we shot
on it looks nice, still soft and non-video-like, though
the detail and richness of the SDX900 are so much greater.
Still, the DVX100 integrates much better than ordinary
video ever would."
Mermin served as the editor on Beauty Academy. "We off-lined on an old
Avid, and since we shot in 24P standard, we treated it as we would any other
30-frame video project," she explained. "I edited it myself at
Goldcrest Post (New York, NY). We finished on a Symphony, also at Goldcrest,
and we did an HD up-convert at Devlin Video International (New York, NY)."
" The SDX900 images look great, and I’m very pleased we used the camera," Mermin
continued. "I hope in its small way Beauty Academy will play a part in
bringing these women’s reality closer to ours, in reminding us that we're
all part of the same fragile world and that only chance has kept some of us
safe while others endure incomprehensible violence."
Panasonic’s AJ-SDX900 offers filmmakers the ultimate in acquisition flexibility,
expressed in the operator-controllable selection of EFP-quality 4:2:2 sampled
DVCPRO50 or classic 4:1:1 sampled DVCPRO recording, with support for native
16:9 wide-screen. The
AJ-SDX900 combines in one camera the "look" and "feel" of
electronic film, high-performance 525-line field production, and low-cost NTSC
compatible news. It is also the first 50Mbps 4:2:2 sampled standard definition
camcorder to offer 24 frames-per-second progressive scan (480/24p) acquisition,
in addition to 30 frames-per-second progressive (480/30p) and 60-fields-per-second
interlace scan (480/60i) capture.
For information on the Tribeca Film Institute, visit www.tribecafilmfestival.org
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