Living Dolls Canadian Broadcast Premiere – Global TV U.S. Broadcast Premiere – Logo TV October – November 2013 GAT PR Press Summary
“Living Dolls is a Gem.” -James Bawden, TV Critic "A truly fascinating and occasionally heartbreaking documentary…" -William Brownridge, The Film Reel “No-holds barred, x-ray vision of doll-collecting...” -Donald D’Haene, The Huffington Post “A fabulous look at…people fixated on collecting dolls.” -John Doyle, The Globe and Mail “Mesmerizing.” -Rebecca Burt Rey, Jezebel “Compelling and unforgettable…” -VIMOOZ “Portraits are loving comments on how we keep ourselves glued together.” - Anne Harris, Austin Chronicle
Interviews Completed Global Television – Morning Show Interviewed: Maureen Judge, Toronto subject Mike Meireles NewsTalk – The John Moore Show Interviewed: Maureen Judge 680 News Interviewed: Maureen Judge Sirius XM – The Ward and Al Show Interviewed: Maureen Judge Xtra Interviewed: Maureen Judge, Toronto subject Mike Meireles Metro Toronto Interviewed: Maureen Judge, Toronto subject Mike Meireles Fast Company – Co Create Interviewed: Maureen Judge Huffington Post Interviewed: Maureen Judge NewNowNext Interviewed: Maureen Judge
DON'T JUDGE: MEET PEOPLE WHO TAKE DOLL COLLECTING TO EXTREMES Christine Champagne http://www.fastcocreate.com/3021004/dont-judge-meet-people-who-take-doll-collecting-to-extremes
Director Maureen Judge takes a look at the sometimes weird, sometimes artful and sometimes sad subculture of doll collecting in the documentary Living Dolls. Many of us abandon our dolls, boxing up our G.I. Joes and Barbies and banishing them to the basement once we hit a certain age and lose interest in them or find it is no longer socially acceptable to play with dolls. But other people develop a fascination with the inanimate objects that continues into adulthood as we see in Living Dolls. An hour-long version of the feature-length documentary, which recently screened at the Austin Film Festival, premieres on Logo TV Monday, November 4.
“I think dolls are really interesting because they look like us, and you can project your dreams on them, your wants, your desires, your losses, whatever they are, and the dolls can mirror them back,” says Living Dolls director Maureen Judge, who had no problem finding adults eager to share their love of dolls with her. But casting Living Dolls wasn’t about locating average collectors with curio cabinets full of Madame Alexanders. Judge wanted to examine people who view their dolls as much more than mere collectibles and have intense relationships-or at least what they believe to be relationships--with them. “To me, it was finding out why they are in a relationship with this collection and how it affects their relationships with other human beings,” Judge says. Ultimately, Judge profiles four people in the TV cut of Living Dolls (there are five subjects in the feature-length version) who are in deep with their dolls. Among the people featured is David Hockey, a middle-aged man who collects life-sized Real Dolls, which are made to look and function, in all the key physical respects, like real women. He tools around in his sports car with his favorite, Bianca, who is somewhat of a celebrity--she was one of four dolls featured in the movie Lars and the Real Girl, and he likes to do photo shoots with her. “Dolls make him young,” Judge says of Hockey’s fixation on his faux women.
“I think being surrounded by what he feels is all of this beauty gives him a sense of youthfulness.” Hockey, who is married, has sex with his dolls. Bianca was actually constructed as a prop for Lars and the Real Girl, and therefore, wasn’t made with a vagina, so Hockey brought her back to the manufacturer to have one, um, inserted. Brit Debbie Barnes has a more innocent and childlike relationship with her dolls. The young wife and mother collects Ellowyne fashion dolls and delights in buying and making clothes for them. She started ordering Ellowynes online when she and her husband moved away from family and friends.
She spends a lot of money on her obsession, and it is crippling her family’s finances. That made her even more interesting to Judge because Barnes’s story isn’t just about dolls, it is also about the perils of online consumerism.
In some ways, Debbie has never grown up, and neither has Mike Meireles, who can't get enough of Barbie and is seen venturing away from home--he and his partner live rent-free with Meireles’s mother--to a Barbie convention in Los Angeles. Meireles collected Barbies as a little boy but hid them away because he didn’t want anyone to know. When he finally came out as a gay man, his Barbies came out of the closet, too. Elsewhere, Michael Sullivan aka RoboMike does terrible things to Barbies, gouging out their eyes and cutting off their hair, though it is all in the name of art. The New York City visual effects artist, who has worked on films such as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, has spent years transforming the plastic figures--and other types of dolls, too--into robot dolls for the epic robot doll sex film he has been working on for years. Titled The Sex Life of Robots, portions of the stop-motion animated film have been screened at the Museum of Sex. “Michael is an amazing, brilliant artist,” Judge says, noting that she wanted to include him in the film because his relationship with dolls is far from personal. “For him, they’re an armature. They’re a framework on which to make his robots.” While we get to know the doll collectors, Living Dolls also introduces us to their loved ones, including Sullivan’s long-time girlfriend, who doesn’t actually live with him; Barnes’s mother and husband; and Meireles’s mother and partner. Hockey’s wife welcomed Judge and her crew into her home but did not want to appear in the film.
“I tried to [include family members] as much as I could, to show them loved by other people, because I think it’s really important for us to understand that they are full people,” Judge says. “If they’re just isolated and not seen in the bigger world, it’s not easy for us to see that they have layers, and they run deep, and they have real emotions.” The director didn’t want to trivialize her subjects, and she tried not to cast judgment on anyone. “When I’m filming, I just sort of hop on the train,” she says. “I just go into their world, and I love it.” Judge isn’t a doll collector, but she remembers two dolls from her childhood with great fondness. “One was just a baby doll like every other girl had, and I could bottle feed her and change her diapers. I named her Elizabeth, my middle name,” Judge says. “And then I had a nun doll. She was a gift from my grandmother, and she had been my mother’s doll. I was brought up Catholic, and every Sunday we had to go to church, and I would see the nuns sitting there in these fabulous ‘costumes.’ So I just love this doll because of her costume, which is the nun’s habit. I wasn’t at that point making the connection between their lives and their habit or who they were. I just wanted to wear exotic costumes.” Judge still has the nun doll, though it isn’t on display. She keeps it in a trunk in her basement. [Images courtesy of Maureen Judge]
'Living Dolls’ a Unique Look at Doll Obsession Donald D'Haene http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/donald-dhaene/living-dolls_b_4177136.html
A study by an American psychiatrist into homosexuality suggested that all the boys he classified as “feminine” played with a doll such as Barbie; for nearly a fifth of them, such a doll was their favourite toy. Only two-fifths of the “masculine” boys were reported as playing with a doll even occasionally. Non-fiction lover that I am, I love myth busters. Maureen Judge’s provocative documentary Living Dolls takes the lid off doll lovers’ Pandora’s box. She does this with an up close and seemingly playful look at the world of a select few doll collectors. This film, and their world, has to be seen to be believed. Full confession: I’m one of those homosexuals who never played with dolls. In fact, I remember walking over them in my lesbian sister’s doll-filled room. How’s that for myth busting? The caveat being I ended up with a best friend of 25 years who was a doll collector before I met him (and since, but I didn’t find that out until later). In all that time I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen “the girls”. And so the obsession with dolls is foreign to me; obsessions themselves, a part of my life. Perhaps a window into someone else’s obsession is a mirror image of our own. Even so, I found myself shaking my head at the cast of characters in this doc—and often—but I could never take my eyes off them.
They’re original, quirky, anything but doll like. Certainly, at turns odd, diva-ish, bizarre, addictive, selfish to a fault. All display the “slice of humanity” that collector Michael refers to early in the film. Witty, whimsical elf-like Michael is an artist and animator who transforms dolls into robots for an epic robot-porn film. I found him fascinating, intelligent and truly creative. David is a married man who believes his “love dolls” give him the best of both sex and art. His interactions with them on film are in the “have to be seen to be believed”category. One, Bianca, even receives screen credit! Saddest of all (in a melancholy way) is Debbie, a young married mother who spends way more money than the family earns to feed her habit. Debbie is beautiful with a caring husband, wonderful children. The window into her world looks pretty from the outside but appearances are deceiving. Oh, there are lighter moments to be had.
Did you hear about the Drag Queen Ken-Barbie? It “came out” with three, count ‘em, three of Barbie’s dresses. Mike, a Barbie-loving, 30-something year old man who never left home would know all about that. Barbie seems to have turned into something of a gay icon. The coming out process is two-fold: “They disclose their sexuality. They profess their love for Barbie.” Not necessarily in that order! I could write an essay on Mike in this film alone. It is his time on screen that had me shaking my head the most! What a character. As interesting as all the participants are it is director Maureen Judge who is the master behind the rhythm of this film. She is non-judgmental but at the same time presents a no-holds barred, x-ray vision of doll collecting. To be more precise: it is the synthesis of Living Doll’s content: performance, design, Judge’s direction, music (Aaron Davis soundtrack is magical), lighting, photography (Daniel Grant is a superb cinematographer), along with George Wright’s great editing that makes this film truly unique.
It is true that the best editing is invisible, but you could also say that editing is like seeing the editor’s handwriting up on screen. Director Judge and Editor Wright’s hand prints are all over this film. It is the collective talent of all those working on this film that sets this documentary a cut above the rest. Living Dolls just played the Austin Film Festival. It next airs on Logo TV Nov. 4 at 10 PM in their documentary slot What? Logo Documentaries. A Conversation with Maureen Judge How many years have you been makin’ movies? Maureen Judge: I’ve been makin’ movies for over 20 years. I started in comedy drama, but moved into documentary after I made my first documentary, And We Knew How To Dance: Women and WWI. I loved working in the small intimate setting of documentary making and hearing stories from so many interesting and extraordinary people. How did you come to this subject as a documentary for your company? As a child, I played with dolls and had a modest collection. Since then, I’ve made a lot of docs that centered around women and their relationships to society and both off screen and on screen, there always seemed to be a doll collector. In my last documentary, Mom’s Home, one of the subjects who happened to collect dolls was losing her memory and we filmed her while she was preparing to move and having to give away her collection. Each doll had a special story attached to it, and as she gave them away, one by one, like her memory, she was losing a part of herself and her own history. Have any of the participants seen the doc yet? If so, how did they feel about how they came across on film? So far, I’ve shown the film to all of the participants except David, who I will show in the next couple of days. All of them have expressed how much they like the film and how they feel it portrays them as whole people, not misfits. Mike, who collects Barbie dolls, was a little nervous about his crying while filming and confessed he was worried he might look like a baby. But when he saw it, he was relieved and happy. He felt he was portrayed as an individual coping with a new situation, who missed and loved his partner and family deeply. Debbie, the Ellowyne collector, was moved by the film. When she watched Mike cry on screen, she started to cry.
She empathized with Mike’s loneliness and isolation. For Debbie, Living Dolls portrayed her life as it was a year ago, with spending out of control and, as a young mother, still dealing with the loss of adolescence and feelings of loneliness. She’s currently working on reigning in her spending, has changed her doll collection to ball-jointed dolls and is making and selling crocheted doll clothing. Michael, the robot artist, really enjoyed the film with its quirky sensibility. He admits his take on dolls is a little different from the others, as he sees Barbie as an armature or framework upon which he can make a new object: a robot. He enjoyed Living Dolls and learning about the other subjects’ relationships to their dolls and had to admit he had his own unique relationship with his dolls and robots. He’s so supportive that he’s donated a robot to the Living Dolls Contest on Facebook. Was this a difficult film to make? A joy? A challenge? The film was a joy to make. It was different than many of the films I’ve directed, as all of the subjects were happy with the relationships they had with their dolls. The dolls gave them an emotionally happy and safe place to go to and play or act out their dreams and desires. The greatest challenge making Living Dolls was finding the dramatic arc of each story. I had to look deep into the collectors’ lives to understand the struggles and for some, demons, each of them were facing. How do you feel about the results? I’m pleased with Living Dolls, both from the point of view of story and visually. I worked with director of photography Daniel Grant who has an incredible aesthetic. He manages to capture beautiful images, while keeping the story and the individuals top of mind. When I’m shooting, it’s always hard to know how it will turn out and how an audience will respond to it. How would you describe your style of directing/producing? I tend to produce documentaries that move me in some way. Often, they are relationship films around the family and society. They are usually films that I intend to direct, so I am also engaged in the research. My style of directing is observational film making. As you know, Donald, since you were the subject of one of my films, Family Secrets: When Nobody’s Looking, based on your memoir Father’s Touch. I spend time with my subjects, and through working closely with them, we learn to trust one another. This enables the individuals to be open and receptive while we are filming. I like to work with a maximum of two to three crew members, so filming is a very intimate experience for all of us.
I also tend to plan shoots wherever possible around events or action-oriented activities that reflect a relationship or a state of mind, so that the subjects can focus on what they are doing, and as a crew we can focus on capturing the social dynamic. The documentary filmmakers of a generation ago, who worked in Direct Cinema, such as the Maysles Brothers (Grey Gardens) and Alan King (A Married Couple) are among my favourite documentary filmmakers. I also love comedy and satire, and naturalistic film making. A couple of films I just saw that really moved me and made me uncomfortable and laugh out loud were Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine and Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight. Is filmmaking your passion? I can’t imagine doing anything else! But really there’s a whole world out there, which I discover every time I make a film, so maybe in another lifetime, I could find another passion. Appeared first in: http://donaldsdish.ca/2013/10/01/living-dolls-fake-flesh-for-fantasy-dish-xtra-with-its-director/
Also appeared in the following media outlet: http://goodmenproject.com/arts/living-dolls-a-unique-look-at-doll-obsession-js/
Watch: Men play with sexy, realistic dolls in 'Living Dolls' Liane Bonin Starr http://www.hitfix.com/starr-raving/watch-men-play-with-sexy-realistic-dolls-in-living-dolls If you're wondering why a grown-ass man or woman would collect dolls, you'll want to watch the one-hour documentary " Living Dolls" (Mon. Nov. 4, 10:00 p.m. on Logo TV) to get at least a partial answer to that question. Though the people profiled on this show (which is part of the WHAT!? Logo Documentaries series) range from a lonely housewife to a gay man who has over 500 Barbies, an artist who mutilates dolls for his projects, and a sex doll, um, admirer, they all have a greater appreciation for plastic people than most. However, that could change. Click here to get your chance to win a custom-made doll of your own . Go ahead, slide down the slippery slope of strange! “From my previous documentaries that focus on women and their families, I noticed many of my subjects collected dolls and that dolls played an important role in their lives,” says award-winning filmmaker Maureen Judge. “In 'Living Dolls' we see a deep and passionate connection between the collectors and their dolls, and how this relationship offers an outlet for the hidden side of their emotional lives.” "Living Dolls" introduces us to individuals whose obsession with dolls mirrors their lives. For Mike - who is gay and lives with his life-partner and parents – his fascination with Barbie dolls is an outgrowth of his sexual identity. Both were forbidden secrets in his childhood, and both were later accepted by Mike’s mother (though not his father). Debbie is a young British mom who finds herself alone, with children at school and a husband who’d come home from work and immediately dive into X-Box Live with online friends. She began to live a fantasy life with collectible Ellowyne fashion dolls that mirrored her moods and strained the family budget. “Whatever it was she wishes were different about her life, I wish she had it,” says her frustrated husband Colin. And disheveled “robot collector” Michael, whose work has been featured in the NYC Museum of Sex and the Smithsonian, is perhaps the hardest to categorize. A quirky artist with a sink, both in disrepair and unreachable, he spends his time buying dolls, taking them apart and reassembling them as retro visions of robots. His aim: to complete a stop-motion film about the sex lives of robots. Watch this clip and tell us -- what do you think of these doll collectors?
Mesmerizing 'Living Dolls' Doc Follows People Obsessed With Dolls Rebecca “Burt” Rey http://jezebel.com/living-dolls-documentary-follows-grown-people-obsesse-1461468275
I can remember being 13 years old, sitting on the floor of my living room, acting out a scene with two Barbies and a couple of Strawberry Shortcake dolls. (They were all friends!) It was right at a time when the other girls in my class were starting to talk about boys and sex, and wearing high-heels and frosted lip gloss. I distinctly remember sitting on that floor, and realizing that this was the last time I would ever 'play' with these dolls. Even at that young age, I was painfully aware, I would never be able to escape into the beautiful dream world that my little box of dolls offered me. But for some, dolls and the powerful fantasy world they represent don't have to be boxed up and put away after childhood. Recently screened at the Austin Film Festival, Maureen Judge's documentary 'Living Dolls' follows the lives of four ordinary people— folks just like you and me! Except they all have a fuckton of dolls they collect and obsess tirelessly over. Mike, a gay man living with parents, turned to dolls as a means to express is sexual identity, which were both hidden secrets from his family. Now, accepted by his mother but not his father, Mike is an out-and-proud Barbie collector. So take that, haters.
For Debbie, dolls became a way to deal with loneliness when she found herself isolated from a family increasingly drawn to video games and online activities. Now, collectible Ellowyne dolls practically dominate her life and have taxed her family's financial resources.
The filmmaker discusses what she learned during the film's production: Maureen Judge: I didn’t really have a specific perspective [at first]. In the process of making Living Dolls, I realized that the dolls were more than a toy for my subjects.Because dolls are in the form of a human being, they are safe places to our project dreams, desires and hidden selves… For some, such as Mike, the Barbie collector, the dolls take him back to the innocence and comfort of childhood where there were no rules or societal pressures around sexuality. As a young child, he could be whom he wanted to be when he played with Barbie. It wasn’t until later in life when he was openly gay that he could bring Barbie back out. The documentary is now available to watch online in the U.S. On LogoTV.com and online and On Demand in Canada on GlobalTV.com (YES CANADIANS I REMEMBERED YOU TOO!)
“LIVING DOLLS” http://www.dailycandy.com/everywhere/flipbook/160301/9/Best-New-Music-Appsand-Videos-for-the-Week-of-November-4-2013/Living-Dolls
Nope, it’s not about toddlers or their tiaras. It’s better. Maureen Judge’s documentary, which screened in competition at the Austin Film Festival last month, dives headfirst into the subculture of doll collecting. Go from Barbie to blow-up at logotv.com. Credits: Courtesy of Makin’ Movies
Documentary Reviews – Oct 25, 2013 Anne Harris http://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2013-10-25/documentary-reviews/
Living Dolls D: Maureen Judge (World Premiere) Living Dolls Since Canadian Maureen Judge is best-known for the vérité trilogy Unveiled: The Mother Daughter Relationship, an exploration of love, betrayal, and acceptance in parent/adult child relationships, it makes sense, then, that at base this is more of a study in survival and dysfunction than a drop-in to the world of doll collecting. Despite Aaron Davis' reassuringly twinkle-toed music, we understand that all is not gingham and light in the lives of these diverse subjects, relevant to one another by a fetish for doll collection, as well as an inner void they must tirelessly fill.
All of which is not to say, however, that this isn't the tiptoe through the tulips that we expected. In fact, the very raison d'être of Living Dolls, has to be Michael Sullivan, who has thrived in his Collyer Brotherslike existence making robot dolls since 1969. A charming leprechaun's demeanor belies a brilliance formerly put to work as a known Sixties-era photographer, early animator, and prop artist, whose work is represented in the Smithsonian. Then one almost begins to feel for Mike, a 32-year-old Barbie collector who has taken over his mother's bedroom as she works to support him, showing us his 1985 Peaches 'n Cream Barbie, who though ageless, does seem somewhat in repose in her original plastic packaging. But approach this film with an open mind, and find that Judge's portraits are all loving comments on how we keep ourselves glued together. – Anne Harris Saturday, Oct. 26, 5:30pm, Alamo Village; Monday, Oct. 28, 7pm, Galaxy Highland
A look at a cross-section of people who collect dolls for various reasons, none of them childlike Phil Dyess-Nugent http://www.avclub.com/review/iia-look-at-a-cross-section-of-people-who-collect--105072 Maureen Judge’s documentary Living Dolls is a surprisingly engaging look at four people who, each for their own reason, obsessively collect dolls. Unlike other documentaries that fasten onto people who take their hobbies or special interests to an extreme—such as the movie-addict film Cinemania—Judge’s film never feels exploitative or condescending toward its subjects. It doesn’t go especially deep, and Aaron Davis’ musical score is a little twee, but Judge looks at her subjects with nonjudgmental, sympathetic interest. That’s sometimes a bit of a feat, such as when she’s interviewing 58-year-old David, who has amassed a sizable harem of “love dolls.” His favorite is Bianca, whom he bought through the mail—only to discover that she was not anatomically correct. “I just spent $4,500 for a mannequin!” he recalls. (David believes in precise terminology, pointing out at one point that “A blow-up sex doll is one thing,” but his love dolls are a whole other, presumably more elevated, kettle of fish.) Happily, he was able to get in touch with the seller, and after taking Bianca with him on a cross-country drive, David was able to have him “put the real” back into his RealDoll. David, who is married, tells the camera that, if he were to lose his wife, Bianca could never take her place, but she would be able to console him for his loss. In most respects, David seems like a sane and reasonable fellow. But he does sound as if he’s put a lot of thought into it. Judge skips back and forth between David and her other subjects: Michael, an eccentric animator who looks like an Edward Koren cartoon; Debbie, a young Englishwoman whose compulsive doll-buying imperils her family’s finances; and Mike, a Barbie fanatic who still lives in his family home with his mother. Michael is the hardest to pigeonhole: With his untended beard and hoarder’s abode, he looks like the least socialized of the four, but he’s also the most creative, and both distinctions probably have something to do with the fact that he’s not trying to split the difference between tending to his obsession and the responsibilities of living with a family. “I’m not really a doll collector,” Michael says, “but I buy old dolls to remake in the form of robots, and I’m sort of a robot collector.”
He collects dolls in order to transform them into something else, and has spent years working on an animated film starring his creations. “One day, I thought, we’ll do some sex jokes, and the movie sort of took a right-hand turn.” It’s now an ongoing study of the sex lives of robots; the clips shown within Living Dolls are beautiful-looking, funny, and eerie, with a suggestion of the work of the Quay Brothers. “It’s simple,” he says of his magnum opus, which he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to complete, “because there’s no dialogue. Or no understandable dialogue. They talk, but it’s robot gibberish.” Judge touches lightly on the sexual element that seems to connect all the men to their doll worship, and which takes many forms. For Mike, his love of all things Barbie is tied up with his identity as a gay man. Before he came to terms with his sexual orientation, he tried to keep his dolls hidden away; now he’s proud of the care he’s lavished on his collection, and as signifiers of his self-acceptance, they actually seem to be the healthiest thing about him. Debbie is at the opposite extreme: Her doll love seems like her means of escape into an asexual, childlike world, free from adult responsibilities (and adult urges). If David’s cheerful indifference to the feelings of his wife—who appears in the film just long enough to cast a sideways glower at the camera—makes him the most off-putting person here, Debbie is the saddest, for the way that her fantasy life is cutting her off from her husband, Colin. Colin—who says that his marriage to Debbie and the birth of their child saved him from a future that he’d only been able to foresee as “a riotous mess of drink and violence”—is pained by his wife’s quality time with the dolls, which she likes to project her own personality onto. Debbie thinks he’s jealous of them, but he thinks she’s using them to fill some hole in her life, and he doesn’t know what that hole is or how he can help her with it. The documentary doesn’t seem to know either, but it’s hard not to agree with him. “Whatever it was that she wishes were different about her life,” he says, “I wish she had it.” Judge doesn’t seem to have any idea what that hole might be either. Living Dolls is fun to watch but a little frustrating, because the light, surface approach that makes it entertaining also prevents it from probing the subjects’ psyches very deeply, so it’s hard to gauge just how troubled they are. The viewer has to pick up cues from things like the reactions of Mike’s mother to his decision to go to Hollywood for a Barbie convention; the impression is left that it’s a real event for him to even leave the house. During his trip, he tries to get a picture of one of his dolls at Barbie’s star on the Wall Of Fame. He’s a little distraught to learn that Barbie doesn’t have a star on the Walk Of Fame, but then he settles for taking her picture at Liberace’s star. Debuts: Monday at 10 p.m. Eastern on Logo Format: Documentary feature
Hot Sheet: Get Your Stream On Nicholas Cimarusti http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/hot-sheet/2013/11/01/hot-sheet-november1-2013?page=0,2
Some people collect stamps, others collect coins. But the most intriguing collectors are those who collect dolls. In award-winning filmmaker Maureen Judge's Living Dolls, Judge features four doll lovers whose collections have dominated their lives. Their reasons for harboring such an intense fascination with dolls vary from sexual fantasy to loneliness. Of particular interest is Mike, a gay doll collector who lives with his partner and parents. The documentary explains that Mike's Barbie doll collection is a facet of his sexual identity, both of which were forbidden secrets of his childhood. There is also a Living Dolls contest, in which the winner is awarded a doll made by Michael Sullivan, an artist and doll collector who is featured in the film. Sullivan's art installation "The Sex Life of Robots" is currently on display at the New York Museum of Sex. Living Dolls will make its U.S. broadcast premier November 4 on LOGO TV at 10 p.m. Enter the contest here.
'Sleepy Hollow,' 'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,' 'What!? Living Dolls:' Dave's DVR Daily, Nov. 4, 2013 David Walker http://videos.nola.com/times-picayune/2013/11/sleepy_hollow_the_real_housewi.html
What!? Living Dolls A documentary about doll fanciers. 9 p.m. - Logo
Better Living Through Barbie In “Living Dolls” Doc: NNN Exclusive Preview Dan Avery http://www.newnownext.com/living-dolls-what-doc-barbie-maureen-judge/11/2013
Living Dolls, Logo’s latest What!? documentary, gives us an inside peek at the lives of four very different individuals whose lives are consumed by dolls in some way. One uses them to make art, another takes them as, ahem, companions. But our favorite subject is Mike Meireles, a perky 30-year-old gay man who sees his fascination with Barbie as a celebration of his sexuality. As a closeted teen, Mike could never collect America’s most famous doll—but now as an out gay man, he can put his staggering display front and center—in his parent’s home, where he and his boyfriend live rent-free. Above, check out an exclusive clip from Living Dolls, in which Mike gets ready to “step outside the box” and go to a Barbie convention. Below, NewNowNext chats with director Maureen Judge about the documentary. Living Dolls airs Monday, November 4, at 10pm on Logo. NewNowNext: Maureen, what made you want to do a documentary about doll collectors?
Maureen Judge: In my last film, Mom’s Home, one of my subjects was a doll collector and, sadly, she was losing her memory. filmed her in the process of moving and clearing out her dolls, each of which had a special significance and story. She had dolls everywhere, on her bed, the living room couch, in a cabinet…so when she was giving them away, she was giving away a part of herself and, compounded by memory loss, losing some of her personal history. After filming Mom’s Home, it struck me that it would be interesting to understand and emotionally moving to make a documentary around the emotional connection collectors have between themselves and their dolls. And so I began the process of making Living Dolls.
We often make assumptions about people who pursue hobbies like this. Did your perspective change after making Dolls or did it confirm your feelings? I didn’t really have a specific perspective [at first]. In the process of making Living Dolls, I realized that the dolls were more than a toy for my subjects.Because dolls are in the form of a human being, they are safe places to our project dreams, desires and hidden selves… For some, such as Mike, the Barbie collector, the dolls take him back to the innocence and comfort of childhood where there were no rules or societal pressures around sexuality. As a young child, he could be whom he wanted to be when he played with Barbie. It wasn’t until later in life when he was openly gay that he could bring Barbie back out.
Did you have a favorite doll as a child? I have two memorable dolls: One was a plastic baby doll that every other little girl had. I could bottle-feed and diaper it. Being one of eight kids, the baby doll gave me the opportunity to do just what my mom was doing. The other doll was a porcelain nun doll, which I still have. It had been my mother’s as a little girl, so it was quite special to have it as my own. I loved the doll’s “costume”—a nun’s habit—and I would imagine wearing it like the nuns who I saw in church every Sunday. It felt quite exotic—I was too young to make a real connection between the outfit and the lifestyle.
Which of the four subjects do you think is the most healthy and well-adjusted? All of the subjects in Living Dolls are self-aware, which is what makes them interesting and dynamic to watch. I believe Mike’s relationship to his Barbie collection is particularly compelling because it is so intertwined with the positive feelings he has around his sexual identity. Rather than Barbie being an object to project his dreams on, the dolls represent his acceptance and celebration of who he is and that he is gay: “When I was 10…Barbie was buried away because I didn’t want anyone to know, yeah, you’re gay. So I was like, burn all the evidence and…only until I could be true to myself and not have to hide and lie, then I could bring her back out. And that’s what I did. But I brought her back out full force.” Watch Living Dolls, Monday, November 4, at 10pm on Logo.
Documentary About Secret World of Doll Collectors to Premiere on Logo TV in November | TRAILER
Maureen Judge’s provocative documentary LIVING DOLLS about individuals obsession with dolls, will have its U.S. Broadcast Premiere on November 4, 2013 on LOGO TV channel. On a sunny day on a Pennsylvania Interstate, a pleasant middle-aged gentleman named David drives towards Hershey, Pa., with his beautiful travel partner, Bianca. An unremarkable outing, except that Bianca isn’t real. She’s a life-size, anatomically-correct “living doll,” made of skin-textured latex. And David? He’s en route to the 5th Annual Doll Lovers Meet to tell all with 20 or so other literal “doll lovers.” A married man, whose camera-shy wife apparently has come to terms with the “other woman,” David is one of four compelling and unforgettable individuals profiled in Maureen Judge’s documentary Living Dolls.
Their motivations run the gamut from lasciviousness, to loneliness, to devotion to a bizarre esthetic vision. But they share a compulsion to live out a fantasy with representations of the human form collectively known as “dolls” – from Barbies, to sex toys, to sexually-active old-school robots. “From my previous documentaries that focus on women and their families, I noticed many of my subjects collected dolls and that dolls played an important role in their lives,” says award-winning filmmaker Maureen Judge. “In Living Dolls we see a deep and passionate connection between the collectors and their dolls, and how this relationship offers an outlet for the hidden side of their emotional lives.” Living Dolls introduces us to individuals whose obsession with dolls mirrors their lives. For Mike - who is gay and lives with his life-partner and parents – his fascination with Barbie dolls is an outgrowth of his sexual identity. Both were forbidden secrets in his childhood, and both were later accepted by Mike’s mother (though not his father). Debbie is a young British mom who finds herself alone, with children at school and a husband who’d come home from work and immediately dive into X-Box Live with online friends. She began to live a fantasy life with collectible Ellowyne fashion dolls that mirrored her moods and strained the family budget. “Whatever it was she wishes were different about her life, I wish she had it,” says her frustrated husband Colin. And disheveled “robot collector” Michael, whose work has been featured in the NYC Museum of Sex and the Smithsonian, is perhaps the hardest to categorize. A quirky artist with a sink, both in disrepair and unreachable, he spends his time buying dolls, taking them apart and reassembling them as retro visions of robots. His aim: to complete a stop-motion film about the sex lives of robots.
Living Dolls http://dutchbarbieworld.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/living-dolls/
Living Dolls is a documentary by Maureen Judge. “Living Dolls is an up-close and playful look at the weirdly wonderful world of doll collectors – these people are anything but plastic. The documentary introduces us to the quirky and colourful characters that collect all types of dolls and features individuals whose normal lives – with jobs, families and friends – are ultimately shaped by their obsession. You’ll meet a young married mother who spends way more money than the family earns to feed her habit; a Barbie-loving 30‐something man who never left home; an artist and animator who transforms fashion dolls into robots for an epic robot-porn film he’s worked on for years; and a married man who believes his love dolls give him the best of both sex and art.” Here is the link to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIaq5g3jXjs
On the website from Living Dolls they introduce the five collectors. Here is the link to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIaq5g3jXjs http://www.makinmovies.ca/livingdolls-collectors Personally I’m very interested in Mike’s story. He is a Barbie collector who is going to his first Barbie convention. Here are some YouTube clips that introduce Mike:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2dG7wSE9MU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfWM807NMac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H79QUgkQXlY This Documentary will be aired on October 5, 8pm on Global Television Later this year the Dutch network SBS6 is also going to show it. for more information http://www.makinmovies.ca/livingdolls https://www.facebook.com/LivingDollsDoc?directed_target_id=0
TVF Int’l sells Maureen Judge’s “Living Dolls” to Logo Etan Vlessing http://realscreen.com/2013/09/20/tvf-intl-sells-maureen-judges-living-dolls-to-logo/
TVF International has sold Maureen Judge’s doll collector documentary Living Dolls to U.S. cable network Logo. The sales agent has also sold the feature-length film to RTL Germany, Nat Geo for Latin America, TVN in Poland, SBS in The Netherlands and Israel’s Yes-DBS. The Makin’ Movies production will bow on Global Television on October 5, before debuting Stateside on Logo on November 4. It will also screen in competition at the Austin Film Festival, which takes place October 24 to 31. Living Dolls, produced and directed by Judge, received financing from the Shaw-Hot Docs Completion Fund, the Canada Media Fund, and Canadian tax credits.
TVF International sells Maureen Judge’s Living Dolls to Logo Etan Vlessing http://playbackonline.ca/2013/09/20/tvf-international-sells-maureen-judges-living-dolls-to-logo/
TVF International has sold Maureen Judge’s doll collector documentary Living Dolls to U.S. cable network Logo. The sales agent has also sold the feature-length film to RTL Germany, Nat Geo for Latin America, TVN in Poland, SBS in The Netherlands and Israel’s Yes-DBS. The Makin’ Movies production will bow on Global Television on October 5, before debuting Stateside on Logo on November 4. It will also screen in competition at the Austin Film Festival, which takes place October 24 to 31. Living Dolls, produced and directed by Judge, received financing from the Shaw-Hot Docs Completion Fund, the Canada Media Fund, and Canadian tax credits.
Living Dolls Makes World Broadcast TV Premiere on Global http://www.broadcastermagazine.com/news/living-dolls-makes-world-broadcast-tvpremiere-on-global/1002623283/?&er=NA A Canadian documentary about the secret world of doll collectors makes its world broadcast premiere this week, and it will air in the U.S. on Logo TV. The documentary introduces not young girls playing with toys, but quirky and colourful characters whose adult lives – with jobs, families and friends – are ultimately shaped by their obsession with collecting all types of dolls. Living Dolls, created by Toronto- based Makin’ Movies in association with Shaw Media, will be broadcast on Global Television (October 5) and Logo TV in the U.S. “From my previous documentaries that focus on women and their families, I noticed many of my subjects collected dolls and that dolls played an important role in their lives,” described the film’s producer and director, Maureen Judge. “In Living Dolls we see a deep and passionate connection between the collectors and their dolls, and how this relationship offers an outlet for the hidden side of their emotional lives.” Her film takes an intimate look at, among others, a pleasant middle-aged gentleman named David who travels with his beautiful partner, Bianca. Unremarkable, except that Bianca isn’t real. She’s a life-size, anatomically-correct “living doll,” made of skin-textured latex. David is seen en route to an Annual Doll Lovers gathering to tell all with 20 or so other literal “doll lovers.” A married man whose camera-shy wife apparently has come to terms with the “other woman,” he’s one of four compelling and unforgettable individuals profiled in the documentary. Their motivations are shown to run the gamut from lasciviousness, to loneliness, to devotion to a bizarre aesthetic vision. But they share a compulsion to live out a fantasy with representations of the human form collectively known as “dolls” – from Barbie’s, to sex toys, to sexually-active old-school robots. Living Dolls is co-written by Judge and Martin Waxman. Directory of photography is Daniel Grant, editor is George Wright. Original soundtrack music is composed by Aaron Davis. Makin’ Movies Inc. is a Toronto based film and television production company, co founded by awardwinning producer/director Judge. The Genie –award winner has created films for TVO, NFB and Bravo TV, among others. She sits on the Board of Directors of Women in Film and Television – Toronto (WIFT-T), is an elected member of the Board for the Toronto Chapter of DOC (the Documentary Organization of Canada) and is a past programmer for Rendezvous With Madness Film Festival Produced by Makin’ Movies in association with Shaw Media and the assistance of the Shaw–Hot Docs Completion Fund and the assistance of the Canadian Media Fund, The Government of Ontario – Film & Video Tax Credit, the Canadian Film or Video Tax Credit. Distributor is TVF International.
Broadcast Premiere of Shaw Media - Hot Docs Funds Recipient LIVING DOLLS http://www.hotdocs.ca/news/broadcast_premiere_of_shaw_media_hot_docs_fun ds_recipient_living_dolls
Shaw Media-Hot Docs Completion Fund recipient LIVING DOLLS will have its world broadcast premiere at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 5, on Global. LIVING DOLLS (D: Maureen Judge) is the story of quirky and colourful individuals whose normal lives are shaped by their obsession with dolls. Posted: Tue, October 01, 2013 - 2:54
Living Dolls showing at Austin Film Festival 2013 Lauren MacDiarmid http://www.nsi-canada.ca/2013/10/living-dolls-documentary-competition-austin-film-festival/
Living Dolls showing at Austin Film Festival 2013 Living Dolls, a feature documentary by director/producer Maureen Judge (NSI Global Marketing), is part of the documentary feature competition at the Austin Film Festival, taking place from October 24 to 31. From Barbie bidders to obsessive impulse shoppers to doll disassembly artists to men who love their life-sized plastic companions, Living Dolls features individuals whose lives are ultimately shaped by their fixation.
John Doyle Reviews “Living Dolls” - also airing this weekend John Doyle http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/the-story-of-how-sochi-got-theolympics-will-knock-you-off-your-skates/article14680117/
Living Dolls (Saturday, 9 p.m., Global, on Obsessions) is a fabulous look at a bunch of people fixated on collecting dolls. Yes, dolls, but we’re not talking ladies of a certain age nurturing their Barbie collection. Nope. Right off, we meet a seemingly ordinary middle-aged, married guy driving around with Bianca, a life-size, anatomically correct “living doll.” He’s heading to the annual Doll Lovers Meet to meet up with people like him. There is also Mike, who is gay and obsessed with Barbie dolls. In his case, it’s all about his childhood and struggles with his sexual identity. And there’s Debbie, who lives an exotic fantasy life through her dolls. Strangest of all is Michael, who buys dolls and remakes them into robots. He plans a stop-motion film about robots and pornography. Or something. Filmmaker Maureen Judge does a wonderful job profiling this assortment of the odd, the lonely, the sad and the strange.
Living Dolls: Canadian doc explores eccentric collectors Jessica Smith Cross http://metronews.ca/scene/812152/living-dolls-canadian-doc-explores-eccentric-doll-collectors/
Also ran in print under the following title: “Documentary proves it's a doll world, after all”
http://tinyurl.com/lj4ftl7
A Canadian documentary premiering this week explores complex adult relationships with dolls—as playmates, works of art, sexual partners and reflections of self. In Living Dolls, filmmaker Maureen Judge introduces the audience to four doll-lovers. Torontonian Mike Meireles is one of them. In the film, he explains he had Barbies as a child and after he came out as a gay man he came out as a Barbie collector, as well. “As I child I was so happy with them, and then I tucked them away, for fear,” Meireles said in an interview with Metro at Judge’s Toronto home. “When I came to terms with who I was and who I was going to continue to be … I felt I could be happy with my dolls again.” Now, he lives with his partner and his Barbie collection in his mother’s home. The film also follows Debbie, a young, lonely British mom who collects fashion dolls, dresses them in teenage outfits and plays with them, to the point that it puts a financial strain on her family. “Whatever it was she wishes was different about her life, I wish she had it,” says her frustrated husband Colin in an interview in the film.
One of the subjects, Michael Sullivan, is an artist who created a stopmotion film about the sex lives of robots, which was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 and displayed at the NYC Museum of Sex. He’s still working on expanding it and spends his time turning dolls like Barbies and GI Joes into robots. The film wades into even racier territory with David, who collects anatomically correct life-sized dolls made of skin-textured latex. He isn’t shy about sleeping with them or having sex with them. Judge portrays the subjects with honesty and Meireles said he felt he was treated accurately and with respect in the film. Before filming, Judge had asked him what he thought of the other kinds of dolls people collected and he recalls cringing—in particular about the sex dolls—and making “politically correct” but not very positive comments judging the other collector’s choices. But then, he got to know them through the film. “Watching the other subjects, connecting with them on a level, I felt, maybe I should have been more open,” he said. “I hope, people, when they watch the film, that’s what they take away.” “Living Dolls” premiers on Saturday, Oct. 5, on Global TV at 9 pm ET/PT.
Land of the Living Dolls Johnnie Walker http://dailyxtra.com/toronto/arts-and-entertainment/film-and-video/land-the-living-dolls
A new documentary about people's obsession with dolls features a lovely gay man from Mississauga Lots of gay men grew up playing with Barbie. And while some of us had parents willing to buy us dolls, probably more of us had to keep our relationship with the pint-sized fashion icon under wraps, limited only to secret rendezvous with our sister’s when no one else was looking. The connection between being gay and loving Barbie is very important for Mike Meireles, an avid doll collector from Mississauga featured in Maureen Judge’s documentary Living Dolls. “I think that being open about my sexuality made me accept Barbie more freely,” Meireles says. In the film, he talks about how he played with Barbies until he was about 10, when he started worrying about other kids thinking he was gay. “I was like . . . burn all the evidence! And only until I could be true to myself and not have to hide and lie, then I could bring her back. But I brought her back full force.” He’s not kidding. Meireles lives in his mother’s home, although she has moved into the basement so that Meireles, his partner and about 500 Barbies can spread out upstairs. Meireles’s section of Living Dolls focuses mostly on his home life as he prepares to attend his first Barbie convention, and it’s clear that his mother and his partner have let themselves get drawn into his enthusiasm for the doll. “My partner has incorporated Barbie into his world in order to make me happy,” Meireles explains. “And in turn, it has also made him happy.” Meireles is just one of the subjects in Judge’s documentary, which also includes a young mother who neglects her family’s mounting bills to buy more Ellowyne dolls, a man who has been working for years on a semi-pornographic stopmotion animated film starring his custom-altered “robot” dolls, and another man who shares an intense connection with Bianca, his RealDoll.
Although the kinds of dolls they collect may be different, each collector has a similar level of devotion to his or her hobby. “The featured subjects were not chosen for the size of their collection,” Judge says, “but rather on the basis of the connection they had with their dolls and how it had a direct impact on the rest of their lives.” In her film, dolls become surrogate lovers, children and even alter egos for their collectors. “I believe the inspiration behind the love of dolls is that dolls are human in form,” Judge says. “We can project our dreams onto them and, in doll play, they are reflected back.” Meireles echoes her sentiments closely in his thoughts on Barbie: “I see her as a muse in which one can express their true feelings about themselves and their world.” While Meireles plans to continue collecting and attending conventions, he admits that balancing doll collecting and his finances can be a challenge. “Sometimes in life, you have to choose between eating and Barbie,” he says. “And of course, I'm going to choose eating. But sometimes it's so tempting to go hungry.”
Living Dolls Is A Gem James Bawden http://jamesbawden.blogspot.ca/2013/09/living-dolls-is-gem.html
Awhile back at a journalism class I was teaching a student asked me for a definition of "Counter Programming". Well. the best example I can think of is the fine new documentary Living Dolls which premieres on Global Saturday October 5 at 9 p.m. See, Saturday nights on Canadian TV is owned by CBC's NHL hockey. And there are no American series for Global to buy and simulcast --U.S. networks have virtually given up on low rated Saturday nights. Which means Global is showing Canadian documentaries. Living Dolls really works on several levels. On the surface, filmmaker Maureen Judge has made a pleasant enough documentary about four obsessive doll collectors. Three of them are men. All four collectors are adults. But Judge digs deeper than that and this hour turns introspective. The end results are often sad and deeply moving. I'm not sure how she settled on her four subjects but I'm sure it must have taken some time to get the right four. Then there's her camera technique --she gets the four to comfortably address the camera when talking about their private lives --obviously the questions Judge has thrown at them have been edited out. The revelations that flow forth are often startling admissions of loneliness and the compulsion to find companionship with their dolls. On the surface all four seem "normal". David is a pleasant enough man first glimpsed on the Pennsylvania turnpike. In his early sixties he is traveling with a gorgeous companion Bianca. Everything about him seems quite unremarkable. He is soft spoken and Bianca never speaks --that's because she is a human sized doll. And, yes, they apparently have sexual relations of a sort.
David is dashing to the annual Doll Lovers convention to mingle with other doll collectors. His wife never appears on camera but David assures us she does not feel at all jealous of his real love. Then there's Debbie who is a twenty-something British mom with two adorable children. Her husband seems nice too but laments Debbie's doll collecting compulsion which means she neglects him and their two young children. They live in semi-poverty because all their money seems to go into buying new frocks for the dolls. Mike is a grown up still living with his parents --his partner has also moved in. Mike collects only Barbie dolls and has his own museum. Too busy with his collecting he can only afford the time for a part time job. He says he kept his doll collecting a secret as a boy for fear he would be outed as gay. The most interesting is Mike who collects and refurbishes robotic dolls --complete with private parts. Disheveled and rambling, Mike is summed by a friend of over 40 years as both eccentric and possessing sparks of genius. But he lives in squalor surrounded by thousands of robot dolls he struggles to repair. Judge has this ability to bond with her subjects, accepting them for what they are. Living Dolls is filled with revelatory moments and well worth taking an hour away from hockey to enjoy its quiet, reflective charm. LIVING DOLLS PREMIERES ON GLOBAL SATURDAY OCTOBER 5 AT 8 P.M. MY RATING: ***1/2.
Plastic Fantastic Drew Rowsome http://drewrowsome.blogspot.ca/2013/10/plastic-fantastic.html
Halloween is just around the corner and at The Spirit of Halloween mega-store I found a perfect present for my eccentric aunt. The old dear collects misfit, damaged or downright creepy dolls that, she claims, would otherwise never find a home. Personally I think she also enjoys their company and, like most of us, they are a reminder that all misfit toys (and people) eventually find their place. I brought the doll - and it is a delightfully disturbing thing - home and then hesitated before shutting it in the cupboard for eventual wrapping. Would it be lonely? Afraid in the dark? An inanimate object has managed to make me feel as if it were animate and capable of emotions. Now that is a creepy feeling to have just before Halloween. The subjects in the documentary Living Dolls seem to have no doubts that their dolls - and their massive collections are emotional beings, and they chat happily about their relationships with the plastic creations. The mood veers wildly from creepy to hilarious and one empathizes and then recoils laughing.
The scenes where Michael transforms a Barbie into a robot for inclusion in his ongoing film project The Sex Life of Robots made me wince, but not more so than when Mike told his longsuffering partner Anibal that their relationship was definitely polyamorous with Barbie, or one of his thousands of Barbies, being the polys. David is more monogamous and the film follows he and his life-sized designed-for-sex doll Bianca as they head to a convention, "There should be close to 20 people there." The B&B's owner's description of the conventioneers is a priceless comic monologue climaxing with, "The world is made up of all sorts of people." The characters, like the subjects in Kink, spend a lot of time justifying themselves and their collecting (aka hoarding - Michael's workshop/living space is a horror film all of its own). Mike, being gay he seems the most self-aware and balanced, tells the camera of how he came out of the closet as a Barbie aficionado, and Michael explains his film - the snippets are fascinating if disturbing - as, "It's not sex. It's like literature, you can write about it but it's not real." The sex part is obviously real for Michael who, sometimes in Bianca's squeaky voice, does an inspired riff on why doll clothing is an important part of collecting - other than to hide the stains. Alas, just as I was getting involved in the storyline involving the sad heterosexuals Debbie and Colin who are trying to deal with the fact that their children are starving because Debbie spent all their money and savings on dolls and doll clothes, my Shockwave player crashed and the screener went dark. Fortunately Living Dolls screens on Global this weekend so I will be able to find out what happens. Audiences may not get to understand fully how dolls can become an obsession or a sexual outlet but Living Dolls is the most uproarious creepy fun since Karen Black in Trilogy of Terror. Living Dolls airs Sat, Oct 5 at 9pm on Global and on Logo on Mon, Nov 4. makinmovies.ca Also appeared in the following media outlet:
http://www.mygaytoronto.com/hottopics//20131002.php?ArchiveDst=hottopics/
Living Dolls (2013) – or – Barbie dolls and robot sex. William Brownridge http://www.the-filmreel.com/2013/10/04/living-dolls-2013-or-barbie-dolls-and-robot-sex/
The world of collecting is frequently full of eccentric characters, and Living Dolls explores the lives of four individuals who enjoy collecting various types of dolls. Some keep Barbie dolls, while others have a collection of extremely expensive Real Dolls, a line of anatomically correct dolls, but they each share a common thread. These individuals have a strong connection with their dolls, even if they may not be able to fully explain it. With personal experience in the world of collecting, Living Dolls is a fascinating look at some of the more extreme cases.
While all collectors share an unspoken connection through the act of collecting, there are lines that some will not cross, and almost all of the people in this documentary have crossed it.
When collections start intruding on budgets, space, or relationships, it may be time to take a step back and look at what is happening. Perhaps this film, directed by Maureen Judge, will cause the subjects to take a second look at their hobbies. At the top of the expense category is David Hockey, a collector of Real Dolls.
This is a line of dolls that are incredibly realistic, all the way down to the littlest details. David gets together with other collectors, photographing his dolls, and sharing a little information about his collecting life. With some dolls costing upwards of ten thousand dollars, this is not a casual hobby.
On the other end of the spectrum is Michael Sullivan. An incredibly talented artist, Michael takes old dolls and creates robot dolls out of them. His intention is to film a stop motion movie about the sex lives of robots. His house is overflowing with creations, and large piles of junk, and Michael’s talent is only overshadowed by the fact that his house is packed from top to bottom. In the middle is Mike Meireles, a Barbie collector who lives with his partner, and his parents. Struggling with his sexuality as a child, Mike wasn’t able to collect Barbie dolls in order to hide his homosexuality. With acceptance, Mike has been growing his collection, although he’s neglecting his responsibilities as an adult.
Finally, there’s Debbie Barnes. A young British woman who has the most troubling story. Her doll collection has been eating away at her financial standing, putting a wedge between her and her husband, as well as making her seem unavailable to her two children. The Final Call A truly fascinating, and occasionally heartbreaking documentary, Living Dolls is a great film to watch, especially for those with their own collections. Living Dolls has its world broadcast premiere on Saturday, October 5, 2013 at 9:00 pm on Global TV.
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