Girl on Film Original Graphic Novel

by Cecil Castellucci, Vicky Leta (Illustrator), Jon Berg (Illustrator), V Gagnon (Illustrator), Melissa Duffy (Illustrator)

Overview

Follow novelist Cecil Castellucci in this insightful memoir of making art, the nature of memory, and being a teenager in 80s New York City.

One thing young Cecil was sure of from the minute she saw Star Wars was that she was going to be some kind of artisté. Probably a filmmaker. Possibly Steven Spielberg. Then in 1980 the movie Fame came out. Cecil wasn’t allowed to see that movie. It was rated R and she was ten. But she did watch the television show and would pretend with her friends that she was going to that school. Of course they were playing. She was not. She was destined to be an art school kid.

Chronicling the life of award-winning young adult novelist, and Eisner-nominated comics scribe Cecil Castellucci (Shade the Changing Girl, Star Wars: Moving Target), Girl On Film follows a passionate aspiring artist from the youngest age through adulthood to deeply examine the arduous pursuit of filmmaking, while exploring the act of memory and how it recalls and reshapes what we think we truly know about ourselves.

Praise for Girl on Film
More than a life story, it's an account of how to live an artist's life even when it looks like your artistic ambitions are grandiose and impractical. In fact, Castellucci shows, your artistic ambitions are pretty much guaranteed to be grandiose and impractical. That doesn't matter. What matters is how you live with your big dreams, what you give up for them, what you hang onto and what you let go. - NPR

...a story that's simultaneously sweet and provoking: more than a mere autobiography, Girl on Film demands that we ask ourselves how we narrate our own life and its meaning. - Boing Boing

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684154531
Publisher:	Archaia
Publication date:	11/19/2019
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	487,142
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, Soupy Leaves Home, The Year of the Beasts, Tin Star, and the Eisner nominated Odd Duck. In 2015 she co-authored Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure. Out in 2018 is Don’t Cosplay With My Heart. She is currently writing Shade, The Changing Girl, an ongoing comic on Gerard Way’s Young Animal imprint at DC Comics. Her short stories and short comics have been published in Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Womanthology, Star Trek: Waypoint and Vertigo SFX: Slam! She is the Children’s Correspondence Coordinator for The Rumpus, a two time Macdowell Fellow and the founding YA Editor at the LA Review of Books. She lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

2020-02-17
A noted YA author reflects on her path to creative fulfillment.

Ever since seeing Star Wars in 1977, Cici felt destined to become a filmmaker—not just an artist, but an artiste. And after stumbling into an informal dance mentorship with Jacques d’Amboise, she felt her artistic world opening wide. She continued moving closer to her dream, attending NYU’s film program until her parents’ tuition help ran dry and she had to move home to Montreal. Feeling lost, she then left for Paris, where she took acting lessons. Back in Montreal, Cici joined a punk band, worked on her filmmaking, and discovered comics, pointing her toward future success. Any obstacles she encounters fail to create long-lasting tension on the page; whether being the quirky sidekick to her friends’ star power, lacking the technical film skills to execute her directorial visions, or recounting her high school sexual assault, Castellucci’s narrative rarely pauses to sink into the emotional beats. Interludes of contemporary Cecil dialoguing with her scientist father about the nature of memory repeatedly break the narrative flow. Four different illustrators represent different moments of her life; of them, Gagnon’s art bursts with the most energy. The intended audience is a bit hazy: Some things are given historical context that seems intended for teens, while many other references—although not vital to following the overall story—are dropped in without context.

A solid memoir of a young artist. (Graphic memoir. 14-adult)

Kirkus Reviews