I know it's been a bit quiet in here lately, but for good reason! The "American Lolita" crew took the summer off (everyone had a lot of stuff going on) and we are now putting the pedal to the metal on this project!

Our *new* revamped website will open soon, and on that website you will be able to view "LoliGirls' in it's entirety.

Let me repeat that, you WILL be able to watch "LoliGirls" online in a matter of weeks.

No matter how many times I try to explain the situation with our short documentary, I still get the same questions;) Oh! Also, LoliGirls will be screened at CT's Silk City Flick Fest in October. I know I said the festival circuit was over, but a friend of the crew is running the festival so I couldn't resist.

Besides the new website (launch TBD), the American Lolita crew will resume filming for the funding trailer this month. Also, we will be present at this years NYAF/Comic Con. Be sure to stop by Victoria's Lolita panel:) There's also a fabulous exhibit opening at FIT Sept. 17th called "Japan Fashion Now". Of course we will attempt to film there as well.

Deadline for the funding trailer (target length 5 min) is November 4th.

Stay tuned!

I'd like to thanks everyone who's followed our project. I've enjoyed reading your emails and tweets!! Thanks also to those who attended festivals and watched our humble little documentary!

With the conclusion of the CT Film Festival comes the end of the LoliGIrls festival circuit. I've received numerous requests for the documentary to be put up on YouTube, and now that the festivals are done I will think on how to best release this short film. It will be available for the general public online, but where and when it still TBD.

You might be wondering where we plan to go from here. For those of you who haven't been following this blog, the LoliGirls crew has changed a little and is now the "American Lolita" crew. We've decided to take our little film and embellish upon it. Our goal is to shoot a 60-65 min feature length documentary that will examine the lolita fashion subculture as it presently exists in the U.S. The documentary will focus more on why girls choose to wear this fashion, and what it says about young girls growing up in America today. We'll examine feminism, cyber-bullying, eating disorders, the media's portrayal of women, among many other issues. The film will use lolita as its prime example, a foil if you will, to examine all these other issues as they exist in our society today.

I know that's probably a poor explanation of the project, but this is the nature of documentaries...sometimes you don't know how you'll enlighten an issue, the footage you gather will decide that for you. So we have been shooting here and there, slowly gathering broll that we can use for a funding trailer. This is probably the main difference between "LoliGirls" and "American Lolita". LoliGirls was a pet project, something fun I wanted to do with my summer last year (that of course grew into a much larger production), and I channeled quite a bit of my own money into the project to have it come to fruition. I didn't make a dime on LoliGirls. "American Lolita" is a larger venture, and we will need money to have it made properly. This means we will also need to make some money off of it to cover all the money we've already invested into the project. In order to raise awareness of the project, and hopefully to aid our funding efforts, we've decided to completely redo this website and also to create a 'mook'. The mook will celebrate the American Lolita (of course!) and contain essays, interviews, lots and lots of photos, articles, and an index of lolita communities in the U.S. The mook will be sold (we're hoping for it to be finished early 2011) online and possible at cons. Besides bringing in a little money that we can then funnel into the project, we hope for the mook to shine some light on our project and spark some interest.

The mook and website are still in their infancy, and within a few months I sincerely hope we'll make some significant progress on both.

So stay tuned!!!

So...have you checked out our IMDb.com page yet?? Please do, and write a review (if you've seen the film)!

This weekend was peppered with LoliGirls shoots. Friday we ventured into the city (Victoria (Lolita Charm blog), Megan (our movie photographer), and Linsey (co-producer for the LoliGirls short and assist. camera/editor for the movie). After meeting up with Victoria's friend Dalin, we wandered over to Bryant Park for an impromptu photo shoot (pix are up here). We then had to hustle to FIT to grab a seat for the Tokyo Fashion Fest Show. Looking across the audience from the press section, I was impressed by the sea of lolitas. Everyone was dressed in his/her finest. Misako introduced the show, and for the next hour we were immersed in the wild, over-the-top fashion of Harajuku.

Not a day later, Aly (Miss Lumpy) organized a local lolita meet-up at Chocopologie in SoNo. Liz and I showed up with a camera and tripod and luckily the cafe staff was cool with us filming. The entire front section of the cafe was stuffed with Lolitas and their significant others. Liz and I were excited to interview boyfriends and husbands, as well as the new Lolitas who showed up. It was so wonderful to see so many local lolitas in one spot! I hope we can organize another meetup soon!

Thanks for all of your festival suggestions! Keep them coming, and perhaps LoliGirls will be screening in a theater near you!!

As many of you probably know, Anime Boston is rapidly approaching (it's on Easter weekend this year...which is a bit odd I think). I've already preregistered, as waiting in line last year was reallllly tiring >.<'

So I posted on the AB forum panel group about Lolita panels. Anyone running one? If you are, how would you like to screen LoliGirls? The festival version is only 14 minutes long. If there isn't any interest I reckon I might apply for a 'How to make a con documentary' panel and somehow sneak a LoliGirls screening in there >.>  I know AB is a huge con, and I think it'd be a great opportunity for some of your gals to see the film on a big screen!

So here's my post in the AB forums, please reply or offer advice! See you in April!

Hello everyone and I hope you all had a safe and happy New Year's celebration!!

With the arrival of 2010, and also with the chaos of the holidays past, the LoliGirls team are getting back to work! Our goals for this year:

1) Get LoliGirls: The Story Behind the Frills and Bows into as many festivals as possible!

With each festival, our documentary isn't not only viewed and enjoyed, it's recognized. We're not only interested in feedback, but we're looking for people interested enough to invest money in the development of a feature-length documentary. Which leads us to our second resolution-

2) Develop and shoot LoliGirls: The Movie!

First step: create a funding trailer that we can use to approach potential investors. I'll admit that this is my first time raising money for a film (I don't think the fundable site for LoliGirls counts) so it will be a learning process. Fortunately, my associate producer is well-versed in this area of film making, so I'll be relying on her expertise to get us pass this crucial part of the film making process.

Now, I'd like to take this space to clarify a point. With the LoliGirls short, some folks expressed concern over us filmmakers making money off the film. They felt we were, in theory, exploiting them in order to make a buck. I completely understand this sentiment, however I have to explain something: in order to make a movie, you need money. And, you need to make money to pay back those you took money from. On top of that, you want to make a profit so you can apply that towards making your next movie. During the filming of our short LoliGirls, we made a negative profit. I financed most of the film out of pocket. Here's something for a little perspective- during one afternoon of filming I spent xxx. Have of that went towards drinks and food for the crew (it was blisteringly hot that day and we didn't want our talent to faint!), the rest went towards gas and camera equipment. That might not seem like a lot of money for a big production, but for this small project that started out as a weekend activity, it's quite a bit. Of course it was totally worth it, but my bank account took a bit of a blow last summer.

If you have any questions or concerns about the money raising/spending part of the filming process, please don't hesitate to contact me via our contact form:)


So here's a call out to all you lolis! Please let me know of any big lolita events and/or any film festivals in your area! We're still on the lookout for festivals to send LoliGirls, and we're currently searching the globe for lolitas and lolita communities to possible include in LoliGirls: The Movie! If you're at all interested please get in touch with us. You'll probably make it into the credits of the movie for your assistance:D

So from now on "LoliGirls" will refer to the short documentary we completed last summer, and the Loli Movie will refer to our next project: a feature-length (60+ min) documentary on Lolita.

I've gotten asked on numerous occasions how exactly I can make my short documentary into some full-length. I know it's hard to imagine extending our cute short film! But the Movie will be a lot broader and, although it will have some personalities, it will cover more of the history of the fashion, the philosophy behind it, and how it fits into the American J-Pop culture scene. So for research purposes I've been following a number of lolita blogs (lifestyle and non-lifestyle) as well as keeping an eye on larger communities such as EGL. I've also enlisted the help of a loli expert;)

Everything is still very much in the preliminary stages, but I'll post frequent updates on our progress here.

In January I'll most likely be visiting Tokyo Rebel in New York (camera in tow) to conduct some interviews. I was told that after Christmas they would have most of their Lolita lines in stock. Also, I'm going to work on getting a test screening of LoliGirls at NYU to get some audience reactions that will hopefully help me with the Movie concept.

So that's all the news for now!

Hope you guys enjoyed another secret screening! Sorry I wasn't around to monitor things personally, I was taking a production workshop all weekend, learning how to raise money to shoot a feature-length documentary on lolitas:)

There will be other secret screenings, but for now, I'd suggest working on your Scary Loli Contest Entries!! :D

LoliGirls is now officially in postproduction! This means that I must capture all the tapes (over 20 miniDVs) and attempt to organize all the chaos. At the same time I've been organizing promotional material for the guests attending the September premiere! I know, it might sound like I'm getting ahead of myself planning for the premiere, but it's going to be a huge event with (maybe) a mini-fashion show and some other little events (they're a surprise) along with the first showing of the finished documentary. I've designed and ordered some special gifts for those who generously donated to our fundable site (they just came in the mail today, they look awesome!), which will be given out on the big day.

So when we started this project we estimated the documentary to clock in at 7-10 minutes. I'm still working on the editing script, but it's looking more and more like the finished product will be somewhere between 10-15 minutes (maaaaybe longer!). It's tough cutting down the footage, since I love it all, but I know in order to keep the attention of those who are new to the fashion I'll have to keep things tight.

I'm sorry I can't divulge any more info, but you can get your loli fix by visiting Victoria and Aly's blogs daily (you can find the links on the right-hand side of this page).

The fashion show, and Connecticon are now over. Thanks you everyone who attended or participated in the Lolita Fashion Show! Audience numbers were topping 1,000!!!!

The models and the film crew had an amazing time. The Show was the last shoot for our short documentary, so now I've got to wade through all these tapes and put together an epic movie. It might be a quiet month here on lolitfashionmovie.com, but don't fret! I'll keep on updating and there are some little videos to keep you occupied until the September premier:)

Here's the commercial that played during CTcon's opening ceremonies promoting the Fashion Show (edited by yours truly!) as well as the longer teaser trailer:)