Product Details

• Directors: Liz Mermin
• Producers: Liz Mermin, Linda Saetre, Nigel Noble, Sheri Levine
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Docurama
• DVD Release Date: December 19, 2006
• Run Time: 74 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000HDR8BY
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #40,463 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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• For more information about "The Beauty Academy of Kabul" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

When "liberators" don't understand the country they're trying to help, the end result can be well meaning, but diluted. In the documentary The Beauty Academy of Kabul, filmmaker Liz Mermin focuses on a group of American hair stylists who travel to post-Taliban Afghanistan to teach local women how to beautify themselves and their customers. Though well-intentioned and enthusiastic, many of the Westerners come across as clueless and thoughtless. Looking at a group of women eager to pick up some styling tips, an Indiana hairdresser admonishes them for looking plain and demands to know why they're not wearing makeup. She seems to have no idea that until recently, these women were covered head to toe in burkas. Another American stylist says to her translator, "It seems to me some of these women are fearful of their husbands. Why?" And yet another seems disappointed when her class makes no notice of her declaration that Frederic Fekkai--the famed hairdresser to the stars--personally donated the scissors they're using. Mermin would've done better to focus less on the Americans and more on the Afghani women, many of whom have heartbreaking stories to tell. One, who got married at 14, notes, "Men and women should be equal." Another young student likes the idea of marrying a man she falls in love with, but pragmatically points out, "If a guy can fall in love with you, he can fall in love with someone else, too." It is these women who carry the story. And it is these women whose stories should've been delved into more. --Jae-Ha Kim

Product Description

An arresting and optimistic portrait of post-Taliban Afghanistan, the theatrical hit THE BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL captures the wonderfully odd circumstances that bring Afghan and American women together in pursuit of physical beauty and much more. In this utterly unique film, a quirky gaggle of Western hairstylists, including Afghan-American women, armed with blow driers and designer scissors, improbably opens a school to teach eager Afghan women the high art of fixing hair. Torn by decades of war and oppression, the women of Kabul embrace perm rods and mascara with unbridled hope even as they candidly recall the horrors of burkas and bombs. Both humorous and slyly subversive, the film offers poignant moments of culture clash between the Americans and Afghans and touching moments of feminine solidarity. Eschewing the trivial, THE BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL innovatively renders the odd story of international goodwill through hair care in exquisitely humane terms.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ...and ugly goes right to the bone., October 16, 2006

By	Jean E. Pouliot (Newburyport, MA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"The Beauty Academy of Kabul" is a documentary about a group of American women hairdressers who travel to Kabul to teach hairdressing to Afghani women in the post-Taliban era. The film has many positives, mainly its interviews with the women students. Surprisingly, many seem cheerful. A few talk about the war or the Taliban. But against the backdrop of bombed out buildings and ruined villas, their laughter is obviously a defense against unbearable inner pain. The glimpses of their lives -- the houses they live in, the music they listen to, the images they watch and the structure of their families -- is priceless.

While I admire the Americans for their act of kindness, it becomes clear early on that they are almost completely insensitive to the mores of the Afghanis. The students, first of all, are survivors of a brutal regime in a male-dominated, Islamic society. Under the Taliban, many risked punishment to run beauty salons out their own homes.To hear these women being lectured by know-it-all Americans was ghastly. Almost to a person, the Americans were arrogant and insensitive. One woman figured she would single-handedly "liberate" the streets by driving a car -- unheard of in that country. The stares and glares she received did not seem to faze her. Another woman engaged the students in pre-class meditation -- something that must have seemed bizarre (and faintly heretical!) to these Muslim women. Most of the teachers treated their students as rookies -- unmoved that they had been working in the business for years and years. Overall, the Afghani women were serious, devout, family-oriented workaholics. The Americans -- beauty-obsessed, swinging singles and into New Age religion if any at all -- epitomized the stereotype that Americans are loud, brash, disconnected and uncaring.

This was not a feel-good story about cultures learning from one another. It was a story about one culture enduring the rudeness of another in return for advancing its own agenda. It's not clear whether the filmmakers were aware of how awful their subjects looked. It's not clear that they realized the horrific rudeness that was being recorded. Anyway, horrors and all, "The Beauty Academy Of Kabul" could have been a great film had it bothered to ask a few questions, such as, Now that the Americans have left, are you glad they came? What did you think of them? Does meeting them make you more or less receptive to Western values? And so on. It was a major shortcoming that the film left these questions unexpressed. Still, the value of a glimpse into real life in an alien culture was quote worthwhile.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars worth viewing, January 10, 2007

By	JWG "jaydubyagee" (Arlington VA USA) - See all my reviews

Not withstanding the vanity of the western women, this is a poignant, agenda-less film that documents the gap between the east and west, and the modest aspirations of Afghani women to show their visage in public.

This movie is certainly interesting in demonstrating the chasm between between eastern and western feminine mores. Nothing like a bunch of dead family members to cement a reluctance to adopt western fashion. Certainly the chasm is so substantial that its hard to fathom that a term such as "love marriage" exists on this planet, but there it is. And the flakiness that is celebrated in the west as "diversity" and "enlightenment" is exposed in this film for its weirdness. Afghani society is not so tolerant of behavior that is outside the lines.

If nothing else, we have a misinterpretation of gaps; we have westerners hoping to cross decades of difference when the gap is centuries. And yet the resilient women of Kabul, some who have never known peace know that they are right and that the battle is not a matter how but when. This is not a story with dramatic twists or stunning turns, but a modest story of cowed women taking modest steps to assert themselves in a society that suddenly stopped caring what women had to say and only now minimally willing to consider their contribution. It is a moving story of small acts of courage in the face of cultural retardation.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hairdressers out from hiding . . ., April 24, 2007

By	Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This revealing and sometimes amusing documentary follows the efforts of several western women to open a beauty school in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the days following the fall of the Taliban regime. Here the feminist assumptions of the school's instructors collide with the realities of life for women in a more traditional, male-dominated Islamic culture.

The filmmakers have been invited into the homes of some of these women and we learn a great deal about their values and aspirations, as well as what is expected of them. When a young single woman reveals that she is "in love" with a young man, she makes the filmmaker promise not to tell her mother, who would strongly disapprove. A married woman speaks of living through the reign of Taliban terror that kept women house-bound, and another describes secretly working as a hairdresser during those years in her home - in defiance of the law. The beauty school instructors may make you cringe, but you'll admire their students.