Ventura County Star
"Thin" isn't pretty.
The HBO documentary, which screens Friday and Saturday at the Ojai Film Festival, is a wrenching chronicle of four women undergoing treatment for anorexia and bulimia at the Renfrew Center, an eating-disorder clinic in Florida.
The patients' gaunt figures and tales of vomiting and feeding tubes are unsettling enough, but it's their brutally honest expressions of emotional despair and self-hatred that reveal the ugliest truth about eating disorders: An obsession with food and body, like an addiction to alcohol or drugs, is a way of numbing intolerable pain.
"Thin," which screened at the Sundance Film Festival, was directed by photojournalist and "Girl Culture" author Lauren Greenfield, who also has published a book to accompany the film.
Greenfield's film will air in November on HBO. On people.com Greenfield said, "It really has to do with control, and it's really a coping mechanism?"
"Thin" screens at 8 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday at the Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai. Greenfield will sign books from noon to 2 p.m. after the Saturday screening. Tickets are $8 for general admission and $5 for students and seniors. http://www.ojaifilmfestival.com