A faculty member’s film about an Olympic weightlifter and her body image won over the audience in the recently completed 10th season of the PBS television series Independent Lens.

Strong! by Julie Wyman, associate professor of cinema and technocultural studies, shared the 2011-12 audience award with Connie Field’s Have You Heard from Johannesburg.

“Our dual winners tied after unprecedented rates of voting by a very passionate fan base,” the Independent Lens website declared.

Strong! has had a strong run since being released last spring — drawing critical praise as an intimate and compelling portrait of Cheryl Haworth of Savannah, Ga., as she prepares for her third and final Olympics in her quest to be the strongest woman in the world.

The 5-foot-8, 300-pound Haworth struggles with injuries and confidence and the inevitable end of her competitive career, and contemplates her future in a world where her size — as beneficial as it is in weightlifting — is not so readily accepted.

Wyman said in her director’s statement: “It’s been daunting and disheartening to see that even a champion like Cheryl is affected and sometimes stymied by the real limitations that large women face in our culture. From negative stigma, to limited access to clothing, chairs, health care, health insurance, employment — the challenges are formidable.

“But Cheryl’s process of acknowledging and grappling with some of these challenges has also refueled my original commitment to fight against these limitations.”

‘Catalyst to explore larger issues’

Festival and theatrical screenings drew capacity crowds, and, then, Independent Lens closed its season with Strong! in late July, just before the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Haworth was a national champion at the age of 15, a bronze medalist at 17 in the Sydney Games in 2000 and went on to compete in Athens in 2004. Strong! follows her from there to the 2008 Beijing Games.

“But Julie Wyman’s documentary — exuding cool with snazzy black-and-white shots and a catchy soundtrack — is hardly a mere sports film,” wrote Washington Post blogger Stephanie Merry.

Adam Cuttler wrote on Filmbalaya.com: Wyman “successfully uses Cheryl’s quest of becoming a three-time Olympian as a catalyst to explore larger issues, such as society’s perceptions of what being a woman, being beautiful and being healthy means. You go, girl!”

Indiewire declared: “Strong! is at its most interesting when contemplating what it’s like for something that benefits your sport — size — to cause you to feel out of place in the rest of your life.”

‘Powerful inspiration in the telling’

“Weightlifting … is not a particularly film-friendly sport — a few seconds of action, with no way for a casual observer to know why one competitor gets that bar over her head, and another doesn’t,” The New York Times reviewer wrote. “But Ms. Wyman smartly looks beyond the competition for her drama.”

Haworth’s story “is a home run, a slam dunk, a sure thing,” filmmaker Greg I. Hamilton wrote on his blog, Beer vs. Bread. “But what really fascinated me about the movie was the creative documentary techniques Julie Wyman employed. Julie and her team really thought this film through and invested some powerful inspiration into its telling.”

Those techniques include a motion study of Haworth weightlifting in silhouette alone and accompanied by two other female weightlifters. “This is showing us something of the essence of this person and of this thing that she does,” Wyman said in a PBS video on the making of the film. “I thought of wanting to take that movement and look at it more poetically, and separate the act of weightlifting from the sport and the score. I wanted to look purely at the movement.”

Amanda Rykoff of espnW.com wrote: “Strong! has a universal appeal beyond the world of women’s weightlifting. Haworth proves herself to be not only a champion competitor but also a compelling documentary subject, comfortable in front of the camera and in her own skin.”

‘Flouting conventional ideas of femininity’

Wyman started the project in 2004, following Haworth to the Athens Games and subsequently to Beijing and beyond for five years — ending up with 200 hours of film and a 75-minute documentary.

“I made Strong! because Cheryl Haworth inspires me,” Wyman wrote in her director’s statement.

“At first it was her image that spoke to me — a 17-year-old, 300-pound girl standing proud and triumphant, barbell overhead — flouting conventional ideas of femininity and completely exploding our assumptions about what an elite athlete looks like.”

The image appeared in the mainstream media after Haworth medalled in Sydney — in the first Olympics to include women’s weightlifting.

Today, Wyman also finds inspiration in Haworth’s character. “Cheryl’s integrity and her way of navigating challenges offer a model for moving through life’s opportunities as well as life’s disappointments and setbacks,” the director said.

“In these images of Cheryl Haworth weightlifting, I saw the potential to inspire others, particularly girls and young women, to feel strong and powerful in bodies of all sizes, to find and pursue their talents, and to not be limited by the usual narrow scope of bodies that we’d imagine to be athletic.

Promoting awareness and skepticism

“I intend for Strong! to provide girls and young women — as well as people of all sizes — with a sense of empowerment: the possibility of feeling pride in their bodies and excitement about being active at whatever size, and at whatever level, they can be.”

She said she hopes the documentary promotes awareness and skepticism: awareness that “health” can mean many things, and skepticism of a definition of health that goes by weight or body mass index.

“I’d also like to help audiences discuss the stigma and sense of ostracism that large women experience; I hope that the film engenders a sense of indignation about and resistance to those limits.”

Author Jeanette DePattie (The Fat Chick Works Out: Fitness That’s Fun and Feasible for Folks of All Sizes, Ages and Abilities), wrote on her blog, The Fat Chick Sings, that she had watched Strong! “at least four or five times now (I’ve lost count) and it seriously gets better every time I watch it.”

“The film is beautifully shot and really portrays Cheryl’s strength, sense of humor and well-grounded sense of self. ... The openness of both Julie and Cheryl in allowing us to see the struggle for body acceptance is one of the most powerful things about the film.

“Self-acceptance, especially when one does not meet certain societal standards for body size and shape is hard. The film shows us how hard it is without offering simplistic, preachy solutions. I found that deeply meaningful.”

Strong! ends with Haworth entering a new chapter in her life — a chapter that, according to Wyman, has so far included retiring from weightlifting in 2010 and starting work as an admissions recruiter for her alma mater, the Savannah College of Art and Design.

“She and I both know she has bigger things in store at some point, but, for now, she’s finding pleasure in the smaller, everyday aspects, at work and with her fiancé in her post-Olympian life,” Wyman said.

Online

The Strong! website, including the trailer.

More on Strong! on the PBS website.

Reach Dateline UC Davis Editor Dave Jones at (530) 752-6556 or dljones@ucdavis.edu.

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