Sundance Work-in-Progress Screening, May 19th at Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

Joe Wilson & Dean Hamer — Sat, 02 May 2009 00:36:42 +0000

Join Out In The Silence co-directors Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer at a free work-in-progress screening of their film. Sundance Documentary Film Program Director Cara Mertes will host a Q&A with the filmmakers after the screening. This event is part of Sundance Institute’s Works in Progress screening program, which provides an opportunity for filmmakers and viewers to explore the creative process and examine the issues addressed in the film.

Tuesday, May 19^th @ 7:30PM

Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024

Wilson and Hamer received a grant from the Sundance Documentary Fund in 2008. The film follows a remarkable chain of events that unfold when the newspaper announcement of filmmaker Joe Wilson’s wedding to another man ignites a firestorm of controversy in the small Pennsylvania hometown he left long ago.

Click here for screening details.

Out In the Silence

Joe Wilson & Dean Hamer — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:27:09 +0000

Directed by Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer

Logline: The filmmaker’s same-sex wedding announcement ignites a firestorm of controversy and a quest for change in his rural Pennsylvania hometown.

Synopsis: Out In the Silence captures the remarkable chain of events that unfold when the announcement of filmmaker Joe Wilson’s wedding to another man ignites a firestorm of controversy in the small Pennsylvania hometown he left long ago. Drawn back by a plea for help from the mother of a gay teen being tormented at school, Wilson takes an exhilarating journey through love, hate, and understanding in rural America. The approach to the film is aimed at breaking the mold of the traditional documentary. It is not solely observational. It is not a memoir, and it is not a news piece. As filmmaker, as protagonist, as insider and outsider, Wilson uses the camera to empower, to challenge, to confront, and to look beneath the veneer of the fragile balance of order in his conservative hometown. It is a provocative, entertaining, and deeply personal social issue documentary that dramatically illustrates the challenges of being different in a small town environment and the transformation that is possible when those who have long been constrained by a traditional code of silence summon the courage to break it.

Background

Most media representations of gay people in America today portray comfortable, middle-class, urban gay life. But there is another side of gay America that is rarely seen: It takes place in conservative, often deeply religious small towns and rural communities where those who are different strive to blend in rather than stand out and where those who are found or perceived to be gay are at risk of losing their families, friends, jobs and livelihoods, their safety and sometimes their very lives. OUT IN THE SILENCE is a personal and social issue documentary that shines a light on the challenges of small town and rural life for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals and the change that is possible when people on opposite sides of divisive issues search for what they have in common rather than what sets them apart. It is based on filmmaker Joe Wilson’s return to Oil City, his small hometown in the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania, following the firestorm of controversy that was ignited with the publication of his wedding announcement in the local newspaper.

Sundance DocSource » Joe Wilson & Dean Hamer

Sundance Work-in-Progress Screening, May 19th at Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

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Out In the Silence

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