Will Nadya, and the other girls like her, be able to find anyone to help them navigate this maze, or will they follow a path like Ashley’s, having learned the tricks of the labyrinth but unable to escape its lure?įollowed by Q&A with filmmakers Ashley Sabin and David Redmon. Co-Presented with Hardy Girls Healthy Women and the Maine Women’s Fund. As we enter further into this world, it more and more resembles a hall of mirrors, where appearances can’t be trusted, perception become distorted and there is no clear way out. Girl Model is a lyrical exploration of a world defined by glass surfaces and camera lenses, reflecting back differing versions of reality to the young women caught in their scope. As Nadya’s optimism about rescuing her family from their financial difficulties grows, her dreams contrast against Ashley’s more jaded outlook about the industry’s corrosive influence. After Ashley’s initial discovery of Nadya, the two rarely meet again, but their stories are inextricably bound. Girl Model follows two protagonists involved in this industry: Ashley, a deeply ambivalent model scout who scours the Siberian countryside looking for fresh faces to send to the Japanese market, and one of her discoveries, Nadya, a thirteen-year-old plucked from the Siberian countryside and dropped into the center of Tokyo with promises of a profitable career. “Modeling is an equal opportunity destroyer,” Sabin says.Despite a lack of obvious similarities between Siberia and Tokyo, a thriving model industry connects these distant regions. The concept of business, freelancing, working at home. Womens hands type text on the keyboard of a computer or laptop. Two months after that, Vall leaves ninth grade and returns to Japan to try modeling again. Browse 157 siberian mouse photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more photos and images. “Now I see the world through different eyes,” Vall says. Not long after, Vall returns home with one editorial photo to show for her efforts, her face three-quarters covered by a black wig. Maybe it’s easier than being a model, I don’t know.” “Certain high-class agencies will help if you’re not making money as a model,” she says. “They said they’ll pay us $8,000 even if we don’t get work,” says Madlyn, who is so unhappy she gobbles candy, blatantly disregarding a clause of her contract that says the agency can send her home without pay if she gains one centimeter on her hips or waist. Vall and her roommate Madlyn rush from interview to interview, only to be rejected. “I want to go home, Mom,” she pleads into the phone after a particularly difficult day. At times it’s clear that she is too young to be on her own in a strange country and is incapable of taking care of herself. Arriving at the airport in Tokyo alone, unable to speak the language or find someone who speaks Russian, Vall’s optimism begins to fade. “For me, it’s all like a dream,” she says. On a morning when lightning lights the sky and rain is pouring, Vall hugs her grandmother. “We are very glad for Nadya and very worried.” “If Nadya makes a little money, we will build it,” he says. Before she leaves, her father shows off a series of unbuilt rooms designated for Vall and her siblings. When Vall is chosen by a Russian agency to go to Japan, she’s elated. “I was the person who hated it most,” she says on camera of her days on the catwalk. That’s what my eye is trained to see for Japan.”Īt a casting call in Siberia, Arbaugh asks would-be models their age and scrutinizes their hair, skin and weight. The business is obsessed with youth, especially my business in Japan. looks young, almost like a prepubescent girl. “The business of modeling is not something I feel necessarily passionate about,” Arbaugh says in the film. Rachel Blais, another model featured in the film, says Arbaugh “got a job with one of the top agencies in New York as a top booker.” “She wanted to be a whistle-blower in the beginning, but as the production progressed, she got deeper in the industry…and really pushed back against the film.” “ actually approached us with the idea for a film and that’s how we were made privy to that world,” Sabin says. A former model, Arbaugh scours the Siberian countryside for new faces to feed to her Japanese clients. Despite few similarities between Siberia and Tokyo, a thriving model industry exists between the regions, facilitated by talent scouts such as Ashley Arbaugh. In “Girl Model,” scouts and agencies are complicit in advising their charges to tell prospective employers that they are 16.
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