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Rating: 7.5 stars

Seen 1 time

Seen on: 03/06/2011

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Catfish (2010)

Directed by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman

Documentary

Most recently watched by sensoria, noahphex, jenerator

Overview

Nev, a 24-year-old New York-based photographer, has no idea what he’s in for when Abby, an eight-year-old girl from rural Michigan, contacts him on Facebook, seeking permission to paint one of his photographs. When he receives her remarkable painting, Nev begins a friendship and correspondence with Abby’s family. But things really get interesting when he develops a cyber-romance with Abby’s attractive older sister, Megan, a musician and model. Prompted by some startling revelations about Megan, Nev and his buddies embark on a road trip in search of the truth.

Rated PG-13 | Length 87 minutes

Actors

Henry Joost | Melody C. Roscher | Ariel Schulman | Angela Wesselman-Pierce | Nev Schulman | Wendy Whelan | Tiler Peck | Drew Jacoby | Craig Hall | Adrian Danchig-Waring | Rubi Pronk

Viewing Notes

This documentary garnered a LOT of attention when it premiered (at Sundance? or SXSW? Can’t recall), with a lot of people questioning whether it was a set up or truly a spontaneous documentary.

I’m not going to pretend to know for sure, but I’d like to take the directors at their word and assume it’s on the up-and-up.

The film raises a lot of troubling, and unsettling, questions about the nature of identity in this new digital world of ours.

I have a long history with online communities and digital identity, going back to my early days of BBSes and continuing on through my adult life of online gaming, Facebook and Twitter. We all have multiple “identities” that are typically compartmentalized into roles such as work, family, distant friends, recreational groups, etc.

It has become much harder to maintain that segmentation online with the advent of Facebook and Twitter. With an intermingling of professional and personal friends, it can be hard to know what image you should be projecting, or whether you should project an image at all, but rather just “be yourself.”

In Catfish, it’s more about creating a persona and living that out in place of your real self; and what happens when that escapist fantasy comes crashing down into the real world.

Still, don’t we all do that to some degree already? We cultivate and edit our digital personalities as much by the things we omit as the things we post.

Suffice it to say, Catfish is a compelling documentary; thought provoking and moving. Which is what a good documentary should be.

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