Just Do It

Got the Picture?

by Shaun Brady

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Published: Oct 30, 2007

Wed., Nov. 7, 7 p.m., $10, First Person Stage, 2111 Sansom St., 800-838-3006, www.firstpersonarts.org

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

David Kessler's documentary If You Break the Skin, You Must Come In, made as part of a project to teach teens in foster care about art and filmmaking, never manages to hide its amateur origins. But the director made a key decision that allows the film to transcend its limitations: He made it as much about the process of its own making as about its putative subject, Philly photographer Zoe Strauss.

The teens seem to have done a competent enough job gathering talking-head footage of local arts figures, and Strauss herself is a garrulous and engaging subject, but the real value of the film is in seeing these kids not only learn about art, but respond to it. To that end, Strauss' photography, dealing as it so often does with the architecture and personalities of urban areas, is ideal, meeting this particular audience halfway. The artist herself is possessed of such exuberance and infectious passion that she even makes a trip to the Art Museum to check out the Cy Twombly works palatable to the group.

Strauss, Kessler and some of the young filmmakers will be on hand for First Person's screening; surely they'll discuss the indignities heaped upon the project after the fact by DHS, who don't seem to like their portrayal in the film, and have protested the teens' exposure to "improper images" — as if the girl whose mother beat and violated her with a pool cue could be scarred by a posed image of a naked man.

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