Anthem Magazine Interview with THE SKIN I’M IN Director Broderick Fox

Thanks to Anthem Magazine and writer Kee Chang for this great interview leading up to the Oct. 1, 2013 International Digital Release of THE SKIN I’M IN on iTunes and Amazon.

In 2005, at the age of 31, Broderick Fox was found unconscious on the tracks of a Berlin subway station with his head split open and a lethal blood alcohol level of 0.47. As it turns out, Fox had destroyed an entire bottle of vodka and later proceeded to fall onto the tracks—a walking blackout. The Skin I’m In concerns a human work-in-progress chronicling decades of bodily shame, addiction and suppressed sexual identity, which led to what Fox refers to as “the bottom”. Read full article

The Skin He’s In : Broderick Fox on ’Body Media’ and Big Tattoos

Thanks to Kilian Melloy for a great interview and write-up on THE SKIN I’M IN in Edge Magazine.

A few years ago, filmmaker Broderick Fox was, pretty much literally, a broken man. Now he’s whole, healthy — and the living canvas for an intricate, powerful tattoo. Fox’s own life is the canvas for his resonant new film.

Read full article here.

EFILMCRITIC.com Victoria Film Festival 2013 Interview – THE SKIN I’M IN director Broderick Fox

Victoria Film Festival 2013 Interview – THE SKIN I’M IN director Broderick Fox

by Jason Whyte

THE SKIN I'M IN producer Lee Biolos, MATERIAL SUCCESS director Jesse Mann, and THE SKIN I'M IN director Broderick Fox at the 2013 Victoria Film Festival Opening Gala. — THE SKIN I’M IN producer Lee Biolos, MATERIAL SUCCESS director Jesse Mann, and THE SKIN I’M IN director Broderick Fox at the 2013 Victoria Film Festival Opening Gala. Photo by Jason Whyte

Please tell me about the technical side of the film; your relation to the film’s cinematographer, what the film was shot on and why it was decided to be photographed this way.

I shot much of the project myself. It also pulls from a lifelong archive of video, film, and photographic imagery I shot growing up. As such it contains a dizzying array of formats including Super 8 film, VHS, Hi-8, Mini DV, SD Video, and HDV. Two wonderful friends from film school shot key materials; Sarah Levy, shot my first trip up to Victoria to meet Rande and also filmed the sit-down interviews with my multiple “selves.” Andrew Groves shot nearly all the tattoo sessions for me, 29 hours of tattooing all told. It was a real gift to have the camera operators in these intimate situations be close friends whom I trust implicitly. In a few additional instances other friends, a former student, and my partner picked up the camera when needed. People have called the project a very big “little film,” and I hope it inspires others to pick up the tools and technologies at their disposal to tell great stories.

Read full interview here

Filmmaker is a Fox with Many Faces: Victoria Times-Colonist Review of THE SKIN I’M IN

“PART OF THIS FILM IS ME TRYING TO LINK MY HEAD BACK UP TO MY BODY,” SAYS FOX.

MICHAEL D. REID

TIMES COLONIST

JANUARY 30, 2013

BOX OFFICE

What: The Skin I’m In

Where: Vic Theatre

When: Saturday, 9:30 p.m.

Rating: Four stars (out of five)

Broderick Fox never imagined he might someday be mistaken for Antonio Banderas.

Online searches for his documentary The Skin I’m In, which makes its Canadian première at the Victoria Film Festival, often yield references to The Skin I Live In. In that twisted thriller directed by Pedro Almodovar, Banderas plays a sinister plastic surgeon who holds a beautiful woman captive to test a synthetic alternative to human skin he’s perfecting.

Fox’s unflinching low-tech reflection on years of bodily shame, addiction and other issues that inspired him to transform his body into a living canvas seems worlds apart from Almodovar’s sleek, creepy meditation on beauty. But a Spanish film scholar who once mentored Fox noted the films resonate in similar ways, he said.

Both, for instance, explore the nature of identity. In Fox’s case, it was the spiritual and sexual ramifications of identity that would unite him with Rande Cook, the Victoria-based First Nations artist who created the full-back tattoo that memorializes Fox’s experiences.

“There are a lot of people who might write the film off as narcissistic,” admits Fox, 38, who worked on his project for six years and titled it early on. Read full article here.

Monday Magazine Previews THE SKIN I’M IN

Victoria Film Festival preview: The Skin I’m In

By Colin Cayer – Monday Magazine
Published: January 30, 2013 4:00 PM

“There’s this fine line. There are native artists that consider everything to be sacred, yet they’ll sell it for a buck,” says Cook who needed to find a way that still felt right to support himself through his art and culture. He was left with one choice. “I had to create a new art form,” Cook says.

Instead of using sacred items representing the spirits of land, sky and ocean, Cook turned to the ancestral stories learned from his grandparents and interpreted their imagery — no desecration required.

This art form is what attracted film professor Broderick Fox. His film, The Skin I’m In, is an official selection at this year’s Victoria Film Fest. Read full article.