Bodily Renaissance

Reframing Beauty and Self-Acceptance

Directed by Claudia Lee

In Bodily Renaissance, award-winning director Claudia Lee crafts a deeply personal and visually arresting exploration of body image, dysmorphia, and self-acceptance. Blurring the lines between poetry and cinema, the film reimagines Renaissance art’s full-bodied femininity as both a symbol of empowerment and an echo of impossible beauty standards that have long shaped women’s lives.

Through this striking juxtaposition, Lee interrogates the cyclical nature of patriarchal expectations - how ideals of beauty shift yet remain restrictive, how bodies are celebrated yet also scrutinised. In this exclusive interview, she discusses the inspiration behind Bodily Renaissance, the evolution of her creative voice, and the urgent need to reclaim self-worth beyond societal ideals.

Bodily Renaissance uses the Renaissance period as a lens to explore modern struggles with body image. Can you share the inspiration behind this fusion of historical art and contemporary themes?

The nature of Renaissance Art has always intrigued me in its proud celebration of full bodied curvaceous female forms. Growing up navigating body insecurity as a girl, it was a welcome change to see these bodies presenting as deities and not as second rate citizens.

However as an adult, it became apparent the beauty standard in the Renaissance era was indeed just another impossible expectation of beauty that applied to another time and place. The Renaissance beauty standard contradicts the contemporary standards of beauty entirely, and made for a curious and saddening comparison. 

As someone interested in patriarchal expectations of what a woman ‘should’ be, it felt like a strong starting point for an exploration of contemporary body image struggles.  By drawing comparison with historical ideas of beauty, that are in today’s society considered not to be beauty in the mainstream, it shone a light on the impossible and unfair structures that a patriarchal society creates to prevent women across the ages from accepting themselves just as they are.

Chiara Cabri’s intricate and elegant sound design, combined with your poetic narration, creates an immersive emotional journey. Can you talk about the process of marrying sound and voice to capture the protagonist's inner turmoil and eventual liberation?

Working with Chiara was extremely exciting and creative. We had cut the film with a temp voiceover and temp music, but no sound design. When we got into the place where the final voiceover had been recorded, Chiara set to work punctuating the piece with the vital sonic elements that drove the emotions of the piece forward. I always wanted to include breath as a key element in both the dark and light halves of the film, and Chiara beautifully worked to weave those within the score to be audible but almost invisible unless you looked out for it. 

Chiara brought the brilliant idea of warping and adding reverb into the voiceover during the mirror sequence, which resulted in heightened portrayal of how negative self-talk can sound when struggling with body dysmorphia and looking in the mirror. The first time I heard it, I was still so taken aback and moved as I was hearing my own words in a totally new and powerful way. 

In the second half of the piece which needed to communicate the sense of liberation, we added birdsong to imply a sense of the “blue sky” as quoted in the film, to describe light and freedom found after healing. It’s often surprising how these small touches are so impactful when combined with all the other elements of the piece.

The contrast between darkness and shifting light plays a huge role in evoking the protagonist's transformation and acceptance with her body. How did you and your DOP, Natasha Duursma, develop the visual style to reflect the emotional shifts in the film?

After our initial meeting where I laid out my vision for the piece, Tash was insistent upon shooting on film in order for us to achieve the painterly quality of Renaissance art with each frame. Once that was established, the focus on light became even more important. Part one of the film needed to communicate the darkness of the protagonist's mind and heart, which I wanted to do in part by only showing the body in disjointed sections, never as a whole. Tash and I worked with light as a way to conceal or reveal areas of the form, leaning into darkness to begin with. 

Part two of the piece, which I described as ‘post recovery’, needed to communicate an emotional lightness in contrast to part one. It was a clear progression to thus use light to adorn and highlight the form here, whilst emulating the lighting quality of Renaissance Art. I communicated to Tash my desire for Part 2 to feel like a breath of fresh air, or the pulling back of an invisible veil. She bounced light and integrated candle light at moments into the frame which all culminated it a glowing, almost holy feel to the imagery.

How did you and Chloe Nezianya collaborate to use costumes as a metaphor for societal pressure and self-perception?

The incorporation of fabric was always a crucial element of the film, as both a reference to Renaissance Art which features this often, but also as a vehicle to communicate how we can both hide behind and be adorned in the clothes and fabric we wear and interact with.

I wanted to reference Baroque marble sculptures that feature forms underneath veils of fabric and we aimed to recreate that feel with a dark undertone of smothering and restriction. Chloe showed me a few different styles of fabric and we did some tests on how they hung. Ultimately we chose a mid-weight and opaque fabric that we then soaked in water so that it stuck to our performer Jess’s body. In creating this clinging to the skin and face, Jess was able to react to the sensation and aided in her haunting performance of suffocation underneath the fabric. 

For the warped mirror sequence, I wanted to combine the distortion of the mirror itself with adding exaggerated folds of skin to Jess’s body, in order to most dramatically communicate the confusion and contorted reality that can come with body dysmorphia. Chloe helped us achieve this by wrapping Jess in different thicknesses of elastic, criss crossing them across her limbs and torso. As previously mentioned, I wanted to not show the form as a whole until part 2, so Chloe suggested a mesh over Jess’s face. This not only looked strange and restrictive on camera, but helped Jess access a place of disconnect and sadness in her reflection when performing. 

Chloe had done amazing previous work with drapery and ruched of fabric, and her style often leaned into a hyper/divine feminine feel that I wanted to touch upon at the end of the film. We tried a few different styles of draped looks for part 2, but settled on one that matched Jess’s skin tone and was also dyed with elements of pink. It covered her in places but still showed off lots of her natural form - and the fabric layers harked back to the Renaissance drapery but in a much more modern and experimental fashion, ultimately communicating a sense of confidence and freedom that the protagonist feels at the end.

As the writer, director, and voice behind Bodily Renaissance, did your personal experiences or reflections on body image influence the narrative at all?

The piece was extremely personal for me and unquestionably influenced the narrative. I wrote the poem, which is the film’s voiceover, purely from a desire to process and reflect on overcoming my own struggles after many years of issues with body dysmorphia and food. I felt it summed up my experience in an effective way and it was clear to me it would be a great springboard to begin developing the concept of a film around. 

I felt growing up there was almost nothing in the mainstream that was encouraging girls and women to accept and love themselves as they were. After some years of therapy and an uphill battle against all the messaging in the world around me, I had a genuine breakthrough in changing my perspective and view of myself. I felt it was really important to make the film in order to communicate some of these ideas to the world. Part one and part two of the film I see as similar to my journey before and after healing, and I wanted to end on a note of hope and positivity, that good can come even from the darkest of journeys - which was exactly what I learned myself. 

“My hope is our film will resonate with women who are tired of fighting the urge to accept themselves and who are ready to reject societal beauty standards.”

The closing line, “My form is not for hiding, for I am a goddess in the nude,” carries a strong message of self-empowerment. How do you hope it resonates with audiences seeing your work in terms of liberation and body acceptance?

With social media now an ever-present part of most people's lives, it's impossible to escape a constant sense of comparison to what is most often, not even authentic or realistic images of other people online. I know many of us feel a strain and a voice of criticism when consuming this content day after day, and my hope is our film will resonate with women who are tired of fighting the urge to accept themselves and who are ready to reject societal beauty standards. 

My hope was the work would offer an alternative narrative to that which the mainstream media portrays - that women are not worthy or acceptable unless they are making themselves smaller at any cost. If people come away from the film and think a little more about radical self-acceptance of their bodies and minds, then I will have achieved what I set out to do.

 What’s next for you?

I am hoping to begin directing commercials in the next year off the back of this film - to get to direct full time would be a true privilege and dream come true. I am also working on my first feature script and a short proof of concept for that project. It’s one I'm really excited about and it's been very engaging to be working back in narrative form again after a more experimental piece like Bodily Renaissance.

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Production Company - TEEPEE FILMS 

Written, Directed, & Voiced by - Claudia Lee

Producer - Manuela Sanchiz

Performer - Jess Temple

Executive Producer - Tom Precey

Executive Producers - Lee Grumett, Lilia Giacobino, Julian Myers, Christian Parton

DOP - Natasha Duursma

1st AD - Mac Montero

Production Designer - Amelia Tavenner 

Editor - Timea Kalderak

Composer - Lucy Armstrong

Costume Designer - Chloe Nezianya

Hair and Makeup Artist - Emma Gandolfo

Choreographer - Margherita Giuliodori

1st AC - Fabio Olgiati

Clapper Loader - Scarlett Gardiner

Gaffer - Marina Lewin

Electrician - Marie Colahan

Runner - Mel Wanjala

Art Department Assistants - Freya Noble, Emilia Mendez, Ellie Koslowsky, 

BTS Photographer - Coco Bagley

Colourist - Jo Barker

Graphic Designer - Gracie Ashton 

Goldcrest Representative - Robbie Scott

VO Technician - Romi Martinez

Sound Design and Mixer - Chiara Cabri 

Representative at Blundell Studios - Massimo Filippi

Kit Hire - Arri Rental

Film Stock - Frame 24

Film Processing - Kodak Film Lab London

Digital Orchard - Noémie T.J. Phillipson

A very special thanks to Andrew Stanton and Joachim Rønning