Catfish
11
“CATFISH”
Documentary Produced by:
Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Nicole Stone
Cinematic Analysis
Com 252 Ms. Golliher, Somerset Section
Spring 2011
In 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost starting filming a documentary of Ariel’s brother Yaniv (Nev), who is a 24 year old photographer from New York. This film is an intriguing documentary about love and deception and how Nev gets involved into a internet relationship on the facebook. It all starts when one of Nev’s photos appeared in The New York Sun on August 13,2007. Three months later he received a painting of his photograph in the mail. The painting was really extordinary and beautiful painted by a 8 year old girl named Abby. She lives in Ishpeming, Michigan with her mother Angela, her father Vince, brother Alex, and half-sister Megan. Soon enough Nev becomes Abby’s internet friend chatting with her almost everyday. They talked about Abby’s paintings and her family a lot . He begins to talk to Megan when she sends him a copy of her music she records with her brother Alex, and is immediately attracted to her. She is 19 years old and works at a vets office, she is a dancer and musician. Nev soon falls into a complicated on-line relationship with Megan and when he decided to meet her in person, he learned that Abby and Megan’s family were not at all what he expected them to be. Everyone should see Catfish- not because of the twist, but because of how powerfully and weird it speaks to our time, to internet culture and the way it allows the controlled illusion of intimacy. It’s a film about storytelling about how a lonely Michigan housewife creates a stageful of made up characters, with which to flatter, entice and woo a sophisticated New Yorker and when that New Yorkers friends show up at the house with cameras, ends up wrestling control of the narrative, not to mention sympathy, from them simply by coming across as more human. And that’s something to see. This documentary begins when Abby
“CATFISH”
Documentary Produced by:
Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Nicole Stone
Cinematic Analysis
Com 252 Ms. Golliher, Somerset Section
Spring 2011
In 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost starting filming a documentary of Ariel’s brother Yaniv (Nev), who is a 24 year old photographer from New York. This film is an intriguing documentary about love and deception and how Nev gets involved into a internet relationship on the facebook. It all starts when one of Nev’s photos appeared in The New York Sun on August 13,2007. Three months later he received a painting of his photograph in the mail. The painting was really extordinary and beautiful painted by a 8 year old girl named Abby. She lives in Ishpeming, Michigan with her mother Angela, her father Vince, brother Alex, and half-sister Megan. Soon enough Nev becomes Abby’s internet friend chatting with her almost everyday. They talked about Abby’s paintings and her family a lot . He begins to talk to Megan when she sends him a copy of her music she records with her brother Alex, and is immediately attracted to her. She is 19 years old and works at a vets office, she is a dancer and musician. Nev soon falls into a complicated on-line relationship with Megan and when he decided to meet her in person, he learned that Abby and Megan’s family were not at all what he expected them to be. Everyone should see Catfish- not because of the twist, but because of how powerfully and weird it speaks to our time, to internet culture and the way it allows the controlled illusion of intimacy. It’s a film about storytelling about how a lonely Michigan housewife creates a stageful of made up characters, with which to flatter, entice and woo a sophisticated New Yorker and when that New Yorkers friends show up at the house with cameras, ends up wrestling control of the narrative, not to mention sympathy, from them simply by coming across as more human. And that’s something to see. This documentary begins when Abby