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These Stars Are on the Rise

An unflinching look at Los Angeles' top exotic & private dancers. Enter with a full-access pass into the lives of five women whose raw ambitions drive them through struggles and taboo to female empowerment.

VIEWS ON FILM review of Stripped: Los Angeles

Hmm, disagree that they are top dancers in LA

&quot;I&#39;m going to be a stripper&quot;. So says performer Della Dane with pet Chihuahua in tote via Stripped: Los Angeles. As proclaimed in Pretty Woman, &quot;welcome to Hollywood, what&#39;s your dream?&quot; Anyway, Stripped: Los Angeles is my latest write-up. It was released by way of Internet in the fall of 2020. Its director (Manhattan native Marc Ostrick) shoots the film in mostly slow-motion with a sort of enclosed framing. Despite numerous interviews with close-ups, it&#39;s almost like viewing a mature audiences TikTok video. So OK, &quot;Stripped&quot; is somewhat explicit but not &quot;off the chain&quot; explicit. It&#39;s a documentary mind you and it&#39;s about the lives of five women who happen to be the top private dancers in LA. They&#39;re content, they make money, and you don&#39;t really here from anyone else in their existence except them. Stripped: Los Angeles uses title cards to give insight into other stuff these women do besides strip. A couple of them make porn on the side, one is into art, one of them looks into bodybuilding, another plays music in a band, most of them smoke the ganja, and almost all of them have a love for animals (cats and dogs). &quot;Stripped&quot; runs fleeting at 80 minutes as it becomes a mere snapshot instead of a full-length feature. It&#39;s well filmed from a technical aspect but almost yarn-free in its narrative aspirations. Besides the present day footage, there&#39;s no real beginning, middle, or end. These women have pasts (as we all do) and there&#39;s a level of sympathy for them that goes along with their networking success. Still, Stripped: Los Angeles &quot;strips&quot; them of making their plight into something much more farsighted. If you&#39;ve seen the occasional nudity, the occasional drug use, loads of tats, and the occasional pole dancing, you ain&#39;t seen much.

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Stripped: Los Angeles

First of all, I do respect the female stories: their struggles, social stigma, abuse. They are true professionals in their field and could be quite competitors. However, I am really not sure if they could turn anyone on. They give off a cheap, low class vibe. Right after watching this, I switched to &quot;Striptease&quot; (1996) with Demi Moore, where the dancers are nicer, with natural hair, zero tattoos and first class attitude.

The documentary aims to humanize women in the adult entertainment industry instead of just viewing them as objects to be sexualized.
They all have a past sad past and have found liberation in taking ownership of their sexuality and making a living out of it.

Forget the haters. This is a great film about some powerful women using stripping as their form as expression. Read between the lines people - 8 stars from me!

It is well written and edited. Goes into many interesting topics and the girls reveal their views and experiences very nicely. I started to watch it with low expectations but it totally won my respect.
Well done.

User reviews

Stripped: Los Angeles

VIEWS ON FILM review of Stripped: Los Angeles

Hmm, disagree that they are top dancers in LA

Pole Dancing Saved My Life - BAMA BADii

Good film

I liked this Documentary ...

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