Girl Model (2011)

Directors:
David Redmon, Ashley Sabin

IMDB

Synopsis:
Documentary filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin offer this illuminating - and often disturbing - look at the challenges faced by young, aspiring Russian models determined to break into the fashion industry. Ashley (not Sabin) is a former American model who has parleyed her experience in front of the camera into a lucrative job scouting young girls in Siberia. The lucky few who Ashley selects to move on are then offered the opportunity to model in Japan. Ashley's latest discovery is Nadya, a 13 year old, self-described "grey mouse" who possesses a striking natural beauty, and who endeavors to pull her family out of poverty through her modeling career. Upon arriving in Japan and attempting to navigate the strange new world without the benefit of speaking the language, however, Nadya and homesick fellow model Madlen soon realize that nothing is what they thought it would be, and that the work they were "guaranteed" back home seems frustratingly hard to come by. Meanwhile, surreptitious contract clauses stipulate that the girls could quickly be sent home at a moment's notice, and wind up deeply in debt to the same company who promised them the opportunity of a lifetime.

New York Doll (2005)

Director:
Greg Whiteley

IMDB

Synopsis:
The New York Dolls were a rock band who titled their second studio album Too Much Too Soon, and it summed up the band's career all too well. Playing hard, swaggering rock & roll that anticipated the aural chaos of punk five years before the Sex Pistols became a cause célèbre, and boasting an androgynous fashion statement that made David Bowie look timid, the Dolls made headlines and earned a loyal cult following between 1971 and 1976, but their look and sound were too extreme for the mass audience at the time, and the fact that several members of the band had serious drug and alcohol problems hardly helped matters. After the New York Dolls finally fell apart in 1977, singer David Johansen went on to a successful solo career (scoring hit records under the alter ego Buster Poindexter), lead guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan kept the band's sound alive in the Heartbreakers, and guitarist Syl Sylvain cut a few solo albums and occasionally worked with Johansen. But bassist Arthur Kane struggled for years to get his musical career back on track while battling alcoholism, with little success on either front. In 1989, after a stay in the hospital, a clean and sober Kane embraced the Mormon faith, and through his contacts in the church he got a job working in a Mormon genealogy library in Los Angeles. Despite his quiet new life, Kane's greatest dream was to someday play a reunion show with the New York Dolls, and in 2004 his wish unexpectedly became a reality when British pop icon Morrissey invited the surviving members of the band to appear at a prestigious music festival he was curating. Filmmaker Greg Whiteley knew Kane as a fellow Mormon, and New York Doll is a documentary about the ups and downs of Kane's life in music, how his faith came into his life, and his unexpected return to the rock & roll stage at the age of 55.

E-Dreams (2001)

Director:
Wonsuk Chin

IMDB

Synopsis:
In 1998, Joseph Park had an idea: What if someone created an Internet-based delivery service in which, after you'd typed a few commands into a web page, you could have videos, snacks, books, or other small items delivered to your door in less than an hour? By January of 1999, Park and his friend and business partner, Yong Kang, had turned their idea into a business proposal for Kozmo.com, and by the end of that year, the company had managed to secure 150 million dollars in financing, with seemingly everyone on board poised to become fabulously wealthy. In April of 2000, the NASDAQ market crash tolled the end of the e-commerce boom, and it soon became evident to Kozmo.com's investors that the company was losing money like water through a sieve; within months, Park's dream was in ruins. E-Dreams is a documentary that examines the rise and fall of Kozmo.com, and by extension the failings and foibles of the Internet commerce explosion of the late '90s.