Now eligible to run for an Academy Award, these stories from Israel/Palestine, Russia, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Tibet and the U.S. cover the globe. Please check out their projects below and join us in support of their screenings in New York and Los Angeles!

BUDRUS — Director/Producer/Writer: Julia Bacha

Los Angeles: (July 30 – August 5)  /  New York: (August 6 – August 12)

Ayed Morrar took leave of his comfortable job at the Palestinian Authority upon hearing that the Israeli government was planning to build a separation barrier through Budrus, his small agricultural village. He convened a town-hall meeting, invited Israeli civilians, and formed a movement whose motto, “We Can Do It,” resonates with community organizers worldwide. To everyone’s surprise, Ayed became the leader of the first unarmed movement to successfully protect and even expand Palestinian territory—an accomplishment made possible in large part by Ayed’s 15-year-old daughter Iltezam, who launched a women’s contingent that quickly moved to the front lines.

Click here to see screening times and buy tickets: http://www.justvision.org/en/events/table?eventtype%5b%5d=Budrus+Screening

MY PERESTROIKA — Director: Robin Hessman

Los Angeles: (August 6 – August 12) /  New York: (August 13 – August 19)

My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times—from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Using a wealth of footage rarely seen outside of Russia—including home movies from the USSR in the 1970s—the film combines an intimate view of the past with the contemporary lives of these former schoolmates, painting a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain.

Click here to see screening times and buy tickets : http://myperestroika.com/screenings/

PUSHING THE ELEPHANT — Directors: Beth Davenport, Elizabeth Mandel

Los Angeles: (August 13 – August 19) / New York: (August 6 – August 12)

Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the ethnic violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet she emerged from the suffering advocating peace and reconciliation. But after helping numerous victims to recover and rebuild their lives, there is one person Rose must still teach to forgive: her daughter Nangabire, now 17 and living in Arizona. Pushing the Elephant captures one of the most important stories of our age, in which genocidal violence is challenged by the moral fortitude and grace of one woman’s mission for peace.

Click here to see website/trailer: http://www.artsengine.net/pushing_the_elephant/

SUMMER PASTURE –  Directors: Lynn True Nelson Walker and Tsering Perlo

Los Angeles : (August 6 – August 12) / New York: (July 30 – August 5)

Filmed in the high grasslands of eastern Tibet, with unprecedented access to a place seldom visited by outsiders, Summer Pasture is a rare and intimate glimpse into the life of a young couple and their infant daughter during a time of great transition. Locho and Yama are nomadic herders who carve their existence from the land as their ancestors have for generations. But now, as traditional nomadic life confronts rapid modernization, Summer Pasture captures a family at a crossroads, ultimately revealing the profound sacrifice they will make to ensure their daughter’s future.

Click here to see screening times and buy tickets : http://www.khamfilmproject.org/SummerPasture.php

Other Articles

• Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter
• Stories of Change Grant Recipients Announced
• Meet The Filmmaker — Mike Brown
• Meet The Filmmaker — Heather Courtney
• Stories of Change Convening at SFF Twenty Ten
• Crime After Crime
• 25 To Life
• Meet The Filmmakers — Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster

From texting and twittering to flying there yourself, here are some of the many ways that we can all make a difference right now!

THE FACTS: On January 12, 2010, at 4:53pm local time, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, approximately 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. Thousands of people are feared dead and the capital city has been devastated.

IMMEDIATE SUPPORT: Established disaster recovery organizations and national governments have been mobilized.
These organizations are also raising funds for relief efforts:

•    Oxfam: www.oxfam.org
•    Doctors Without Borders: www.doctorswithoutborders.org

LONG-TERM SUPPORT: Crucial recovery and rebuilding efforts are always underfunded in comparison to immediate relief efforts. We saw this in the wake of Katrina as well as the Tsunami.  Following are some organizations and projects working on long-term recovery efforts that have a long-standing, grassroots presence in Haiti. Here are three that have distributed staff in the country now and are well positioned to aid in the long-term recovery effort.

•    Partners in Health:  www.pih.org
•    Fonkoze: www.fonkoze.org
•    The Lambi Fund of Haiti:  www.lambifund.org

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These organizations have been vetted by my dear friends at Air Traffic Control, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting musicians and their managers on activism, philanthropy, and political activities. www.atctower.net

QUICK WAYS THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY CAN HELP:

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1. Donate and let your colleagues, fans, and audiences know how they can donate: Spread the word via personal and professional websites/email/text/twitter/social networks etc. Feel free to rewrite the below suggested text or post as is.

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2. Suggested Twitter text: Please RT: Support the Earthquake Relief Efforts in Haiti by making a donation to Oxfam’s Response Fund http://rev.ms/303

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3. Suggested text for your professional and fan sites + social network pages: On January 12, 2010, at 4:53pm local time, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, approximately 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people are feared dead, as the capital city has been devastated. You can help. Make a donation to one of these incredible and long-standing organizations in Haiti. They have distributed staff in country now, but most importantly, they are well positioned to aid in the long-term recovery effort.
Partners in Health: www.pih.org
Fonkoze: www.fonkoze.org
The Lambi Fund of Haiti: www.lambifund.org

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4. If you are speaking or performing at public events, you can use text-donation systems: Ask people to text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross

Other Articles

• Al Gore presents 2009 REEL Current Award to Sundance Documentary Program Fellow Mai Iskander
• Port of Memory
• Watchers Of The Sky
• Stories of Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary
• Connected
• Sundance Documentary Film Fellow Wins 2008 Peabody Award
• Meet The Filmmakers — Rachel Libert and Tony Hardomon
• Please Vote For Me

IDA Music Documentary Award Nominee
Tibet In Song – Ngawang Choephel (Director)
http://www.tibetinsong.com/

Tibet in Song is both a celebration of traditional Tibetan folk music and a harrowing journey into the past fifty years of cultural repression inside Chinese controlled Tibet. Director and former Tibetan political prisoner, Ngawang Choephel, weaves a story of beauty, pain, brutality and resilience, introducing Tibet to the world in a way never before seen on film.

Recipient of the 2009 Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award
Natalia Almada
http://www.altamurafilms.com/

Natalia Almada was born in Mexico. Her directing credits include El General (DFP grantee),  All Water Has a Perfect Memory, an internationally recognized experimental short, and Al Otro Lado, an award-winning feature documentary about immigration and drug trafficking.  Almada’s work has screened at Sundance, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Biennial as well as on ARTE and PBS. She is a 2008 Guggenheim fellow and has received support from Creative Capital, the Sundance Institute, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She shares her time between Mexico and Brooklyn.

The Sundance Documentary Film Program would like to extend a further congratulations to all the films and filmmakers previously supported by the Sundance Institute who have also been nominated for IDA Awards this year:

Feature Documentary Nominees:

Afghan Star (Sundance Film Festival, 2009)
Director/Producer: Havana Marking

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Sundance Film Festival, 2008)
Director: Sacha Gervasi
Producer: Rebecca Yeldham

DFP Nominees in the category of  Short Documentary:

Sari’s Mother
Director/Producer: James Longley (DFP grantee: Iraq in Fragments)

DFP Nominees in the category of Limited Series Award:

Time for School
Producer/Writer: Oren Rudavsky (DFP grantee : Chato Is Dead: An Immigrant Story)

We Shall Remain
Writers: Anne Makepeace (DFP grantee: As Nutayunean)

DFP Finalists in the category of  ABCNews VideoSource Award:

Earth Days (Sundance Film Festival, 2009)
Director/Producer/Writer: Robert Stone

Sergio (Sundance Film Festival, 2009)
Director: Greg Barker (Doc and Edit Lab Advisor, 2009)

Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech
Director/Producer: Liz Garbus (SDF grantee: Fallen Cradle, Girlhood)
Producers: Rory Kennedy (SDF grantee: Fallen Cradle)

Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House
Director/Producer: Rory Kennedy (SDF grantee: Fallen Cradle)
Producers: Liz Garbus (SDF grantee: Fallen Cradle, Girlhood)

Pare Lorentz Award—Finalists:

The Cove (Sundance Film Festival, 2009)
Director: Louis Psihoyos
Producers: Fisher Stevens, Paula DuPre Pesmen

Other Articles

• Meet The Filmmaker — Kavita Pillay
• A Tale of Three Sisters
• Meet The Filmmaker — Kathryn Pyle
• Match+
• Anatomy of Poverty
• Waiting For Armageddon
• Caesar’s Last Fast
• Easy Like Water

The Macarthur Foundation announced 24 recipients of the 2009 Macarthur ‘genius’ grant. DFP grantee James Longley was recognized for his films and contribution to the documentary field.

In 2005, James received Sundance Documentary Fund support for Iraq in Fragments, which chronicled war-torn Iraq through the eyes of a young boy on the streets of Baghdad, a follower of a radical cleric, and several Kurdish family farmers. The film went on to win the top Documentary Directing, Editing, and Cinematography prizes at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival as well as garnered an Academy Award®  nomination.

Known for capturing intimate portraits and immersing himself among ordinary families, James continues to capture unflinching portrayals of the human cost of war in the Middle East. His 2006 Academy-nominated short, Sari’s Mother, illustrated a family struggling to navigate a bureaucratic health care system in Iraq. He recently served as an Advisor to the Documentary Composers Lab in 2008 and is currently working on new projects about Iran, India, and other countries in the region.

http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5410503/k.11CB/Meet_the_2009_Fellows.htm

Other Articles

• Four Wives- One Man
• DFP Partners with BritDoc on The Good Pitch
• Gas Land
• Budrus
• Meet The Filmmaker — Mike Brown
• Crime After Crime
• Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita
• An American Promise

Attie and Goldwater recently sat down for an interview about their filmmaking and history of collaboration ahead of their screening at the Park City Screening series on September 10th.

Q:  What films or photographers impacted you as young people starting out and showed you the power of storytelling? Was there a particular artist who influenced you?

Janet: Barbara and I both have backgrounds in photography. I’ve always been a huge fan of documentary photography. That influenced me in terms of what can be learned from reality. There’s art that interprets and art that reflects reality back at you and I feel like photography really gives me an appreciation for looking harder at reality. And that segued into knowing that can happen in a movie, too.

I loved the classic documentary photographers like Eugene Smith, Cartier Bresson, and really for a time was fascinated by FSA photographers, especially the less know work of Ben Shahn. The photographer that actually opened my eyes was Joel Meyerowitz. I think it was because when he came on the scene using color and large format, freezing these moments in time or places I never thought to stop and look at. So, It was actually a non-doc photographer who had the most influence on me. The other one was William Eggleston. He worked with the small format originally, which was a look at a whole different world. It was a less dramatic world. What about you Barbara?
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Barbara: One photographer who really inspired me, I don’t remember when I started looking at his photos though, was Sebastiao Salgado, the Brazilian photographer. His photographs are so incredibly moving and revealing. They’re exquisitely beautiful and yet show the human condition and tremendous human rights violations. His work really influenced me. Also, some of the same photographers Janet mentioned affected me, Cornell Capa, Eugene Smith, but also I was really taken by the work of Jerry Uelsmann who did work with multiple images and invented new realities from bits and pieces of negatives way before there was photoshop!

Janet: We also had the “Family of Man”, which was the only photo book in my house growing up. I had every single picture memorized, I just devoured it!
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Barbara: I think it’s true for my household, too! I didn’t come from a very artistic family. We did have that one book. I still remember that one shot, it’s so cliche, but I remember the shot of the two little kids holding hands and walking in the forest.
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Q: You have been collaborating professionally for almost 20 years. What do each of you bring to the table creatively that has made your partnership endure and thrive?
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Janet: Barbara by far brings more technical background. She went to film school and she has no fear of the technical end of things. Creatively, it’s really interesting, someone asked me the other day who do I agree with most when it comes to critiquing movies? Instantly, I said Barbara. If Barbara likes a film and recommends it, I’m going to like it…we seem to have the same needs in terms of storytelling.
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It’s not that hard to collaborate on the actual production. The way that we work is that I like to write, Barbara doesn’t like to write. I do the writing up front after we talk through what our image of the film is going to be. I start writing the treatment and all the grant proposals. Barbara is more of a perfectionist. She then takes what I’ve written and picks apart the problems with it and hones in on the material.
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When we’re in production it takes crews a while to get used to working with us because we see ourselves as totally interchangeable, and at first the crew wants to know who is the boss–we tell them it’s going to be an ongoing discussion. If Barbara gets there first and sets up the shot and starts working with the camera person, I’m always fine with her decision.
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We have a very similar vision but we trust each other completely with those decisions. When we ‘re on a long shoot and we have back-to-back interviews all day we simply take turns knowing the other one will do just as good a job. We’re there to support and to push each other a little bit.
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Barbara: We work so well together. We collaborate. Ego never seems to be an issue with either one of us.
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Janet: She’s serious! We never get offended when another one makes a suggestion to other about what we’ve done. We’ve long since stopped being nice to each other. All that “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that’s not a good idea…” We can say comfortably that’s a bad idea, move on. Not worrying about being nice to each other goes a long way.
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Barbara: Also, so many of our films deal with human rights issues and women’s issues and politically we’re totally on the same wavelength with our commitment to making films that say something to the condition of women.
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Q: Documentary filmmakers can have very personal and very different definitions of what a documentary should do in the world. Whether it’s art for arts sake, activist filmmaking where your film is a tool for change, etc.. How do you see your films functioning in the world?
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Janet: Our first film, Motherless: A legacy of Loss from Illegal Abortion, is still shown widely in classrooms and for organizing purposes in reproductive justice circles. So for over 15 years, we’ve intermittently attended screenings of this modest, half hour movie that was our first collaborative effort. So every time I see a new group of young women–and men–absorb this information and react to it, it continues to remind me of the power and potential for documentary.

We’ve only made one film, Landowska: Uncommon Visionary, which didn’t deal with human rights issues or directly have any political content at all and to me it was the least satisfying. I don’t mean it was not a good film, but the least personally satisfying. A lot of people were convinced the central character was a lesbian but we didn’t really end up exploring that discussion in the film and project ended up feeling personally unsatisfying. Once you realize you’re not going to get rich, you’re not going to get particularly famous making documentaries the reason for doing it, for me, is the connection to people’s lives and actually being able to make a difference.
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Barbara: Lots of people propose projects to us but if it doesn’t have an advocacy component to it, we don’t generally respond. We want our films to have a POV and a message as well as telling a story because as Janet says if we feel there is an activist or advocacy component we feel more personally satisfied.  In documentary film there is so much rejection and discouragement along the way, just finishing a film is difficult. I need to know there is a reason I’m doing it.
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Q: You both are politically active outside your filmmaking careers. How influence does your work outside film on women’s issues have on your filmmaking?

Barbara: Both Janet and I work on women’s reproductive health issues. Janet was chairman of the board of the Women’s Medical Fund and is on several other boards and I’m on the board of Planned Parenthood and chairman of the board of an organization that deals with battered women. I don’t know if Janet would agree with me but I’m actually a fairly shy person. I don’t particularly love the limelight, but I try to do social advocacy work. So I guess I relate to women who are trying to find their way to make a statement but aren’t particularly “out there.”

Janet: The organization Barbara is talking about is an organization that defends battered women who have killed their batterers and are in jail. And the group that I work with pays for abortions for women who can’t afford them. These are probably the least enfranchised people around; people whom society and even most charities have really forgotten. In order to care about individuals, women who are sitting in prison because they killed their partner (who battered them), you really have to listen to those stories. We wouldn’t be involved in these sort of marginal issues if we weren’t interested in hearing these sort of stories that happen every day. I guess the two do go together.  Even with Mrs. Goundo, we were worried that her shyness and lack of assertiveness on camera might not allow her to develop into enough of a strong character but in fact that characteristics became an asset in that she was someone an audience could relate to and say “she’s just like that lady I see on the street taking her kid to school.”  She’s soft-spoken and shy and became an advocate for herself and her children. She was willing to do this knowing it could help other people.
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Q: You also go to great lengths not to demonize one side of the issue of genital cuttng in the film and you present a range of voices.

Janet: As we came to understand Goundo’s life and spend more time in her area in Philadelphia, spending time with the Malians there and traveled in Africa. Once you immerse yourself in someone’s reality it’s impossible to demonize it. What we ended up doing was building context to explain some of the things that she wasn’t articulating (about her experience of genital cutting).

Barbara: One of the things we found interesting about Goundo is that while she is against the practice, she deeply misses her country and longs to be back in Mali. Once her parents started calling her to tell her to bring her daughter home, she had to confront the issue, but if it wasn’t for her daughter, she’d go back. She’d really rather be living in Mali.
We also didn’t want to demonize the people in Mali continuing this practice. We want people to understand that there are really negative consequences to genital cutting but not say these people don’t love their daughters. It’s a really complicated issue.
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Q: Were there films or artists (filmmakers, photographers, writers) who inspired you while making Mrs. Goundo’s Daughter?

We looked at Kim Longinotto’s film The Day I Will Never Forget. People say there are a lot of films out there but we couldn’t find a lot. Interestingly, our distributor, Women Make Movies, has what I consider to be a really interesting history of films about FGM. They have Alice Walker’s film (Warrior Marks) which was really the first really significant film made on the issue, and for which she got incredible push back. And then Kim Longinotto’s, which takes a different approach but avoided a lot of the problems Walker’s film had in terms of inserting herself into the film. An outside voice saying “how can you do this?”  Kim steps back in her style.  Our film is trying to look at what’s going on in the discussion of FGM, not line up a lot of people to show how bad it is but look at the discussion and try to figure out where it’s going.

Other Articles

• Meet The Filmmaker — Heather Courtney
• Congratulations to all of our grantees at DocuWeeks 2010!
• Sundance Documentary Film Fellow Wins 2008 Peabody Award
• Stories of Change Grant Recipients Announced
• 2008 Sundance Documentary Composers and Story Lab
• Easy Like Water
• Connected
• The Sari Soldiers

This weekend, Iranian-born artist Shirin Neshat, a Sundance Institute Artist Trustee, sat at our annual Board Retreat and described in terrifying detail a situation we all know about, but perhaps not in enough detail. Among many others recently arrested in Iran’s post-election demonstrations are Iranian artists, journalists, filmmakers and human rights leaders, including some filmmakers who have received Sundance support. Shirin spoke of torture, and in extreme cases, executions. The situation is urgent.

When the press doesn’t cover an issue adequately, it runs the risk of falling off of the radar. Sundance Institute reaches out now to artists everywhere to stand witness until our colleagues, and all detainees, are freed.

This week, Shirin is one of the organizers of a hunger strike demonstration at the United Nations in New York City on behalf of her fellow Iranians, asking for their immediate release. On the evenings of July 22, 23, and 24, I ask the Sundance alumni community to stand with her and draw attention to this great human rights violation. Shirin has added detailed information below for you about the gatherings. This is just one of the many things you can do to keep international attention focused on the issue.

Sundance Institute has long stood for freedom of expression and the power of human rights through artist’s eyes. Lend your efforts — your voice can make a difference.

Robert Redford, President and Founder, Sundance Institute

Other Articles

• Everything’s Cool
• Meet Camp Victory Director Carol Dysinger
• My Good Name Is Stalin
• Virtual Freedom
• Meet The Filmmaker — Anne Makepeace
• Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita
• Meet The Filmmaker — Blair Doroshwalther
• Muhammad Yunus Banks on America (WT)

Sixth Annual Lab Highlights Post-Soviet Societies, Middle East and

Global Stories

Sundance Institute announced the selection of 12 Documentary Film Fellows representing six projects to participate in the sixth Documentary Film Edit and Story Laboratory, June 21 – 28 in Sundance, Utah. Held in the Wasatch Mountains at Sundance Resort, the Lab convenes filmmakers in the process of making feature-length independent documentaries for an intensive week of creative feedback in a supportive community setting.

The Documentary Film Edit and Story Laboratory offers an intensive artist-to-artist collaborative experience where quality nonfiction storytelling is engaged with rigor and candor.  Each artist is encouraged to explore story structure, narrative arc, character development, artistic elements and more.  Sundance Labs are an open, creative environment in which Fellows advance works-in-progress and are encouraged in the spirit of experimentation and risk taking.  

The 2009 Documentary Edit and Story Lab Fellows in alphabetical order are:

Erin Casper (Editing Fellow), Michelle Chang (Editing Fellow), Keiko Deguchi (Editing Fellow), Carol Dysinger (Directing Fellow), Gayle Ferraro (Directing Fellow), Michal Gábor (Editing Fellow), Robin Hessman (Directing Fellow), Tomáš Kudrna (Directing Fellow), Mona Nicoară (Directing Fellow), Jonathan Oppenheim (Editing Fellow), Laura Poitras (Directing Fellow), Garret Savage (Editing Fellow).

The films selected for the 2009 Sundance Institute Documentary Editing and Story Lab are:

ALL THAT GLITTERS (Czech Republic / Kyrgyzstan)

Situated at the a crossroads of global interests, Kyrgyzstan reflects the political rivalry between Russian and America influence, reveals the religious rivalry between Christianity and Islam, and lies between the economic predominance of China and Russia. All That Glitters examines how strange capitalism and democracy can be when introduced to a former Soviet country, one where people never before given autonomy are suddenly expected to make their own financial and political decisions.

CAMP VICTORY, AFGHANISTAN (U.S. / Afghanistan)

U.S. National Guardsmen are stationed in Herat, Afghanistan with the Afghan officers they have been sent to train. Together they are charged to bring the 207^th Corps of the nascent Afghan National Army into an institution capable of providing security, stability, and a civilian government to a tattered, volatile nation. The Americans came, not to fight, but to teach. Camp Victory is the story of things that keep them apart, and  the one unlikely friendship that makes it all seem possible.

MUHAMMAD YUNUS BANKS ON AMERICA (working title) (U.S.)

This film journeys with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate and the architect of microfinance, as he continues building opportunities for the poor world-wide and as close to home as in Queens, New York through Grameen micro credit, his original social business.

OUR SCHOOL (Romania)

The descendants of former slaves, Romanian Roma (”Gypsies”) continue to live in poverty, at the edges of society. Over the course of several school years, Roma children struggle to break the barriers of segregation in a small Transylvanian town. Our School documents one of the first integration efforts following a European Court of Human Rights judgment similar to Brown v. Board of Education in the United States.

RELEASE (U.S. / Yemen)

Filmed in Yemen, Release is a family drama about two men whose fateful encounter in 1996 set them on a course of events that would lead to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Release  is the second documentary (after My Country, My Country) in a trilogy titled The New American Century about America post 9/11.

RUSSIA‘S PEPSI GENERATION (working title) (US/UK)

Russia’s Pepsi Generation tells the story of the last generation of Soviet children brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Just coming of age when the USSR collapsed, they witnessed the world of their childhood crumble and change beyond recognition. Told through the lives of a married couple and their childhood friends, the film interweaves their memories of the past and their lives in contemporary Moscow to reveal how Communism’s crossover children are adjusting to their post-Soviet reality.

Fellows will be joined by six Creative Advisors, including Directors and Editors, to jointly engage in the creative process.

Editors: Kate Amend (Academy Award-winner Into the Arms of Strangers and The Long Way Home), Joe Bini (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Grizzly Man) Richard Hankin (Home Front, Capturing the Friedmans) and  Mary Lampson (Harlan County, A Lion in the House), Directors: Greg Barker (Sergio, Ghosts of Rwanda) and Jennifer Fox (Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, Beirut: The Last Home Movie).

Other Articles

• Four Wives- One Man
• Meet The Filmmaker — Sara Terry
• Crime After Crime
• Meet The Filmmaker — Rick Perez
• A Warm Congratulations to all of our DFP grantees nominated for the IDA Doc Awards.
• Welcome!
• Please Vote For Me
• One Day Ahead of Democracy

 On Tuesday, May 19th, directors Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer were in attendance a screening of their work-in-progress OUT IN THE SILENCE at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The film follows the chain of events that occur when the filmmakers post an announcement of their wedding in Joe Wilson’s hometown newspaper in Oil City, PA. The film thoughtfully explores homophobia on and its effect on town’s residents, ultimately seeking the possibility for transformation in small town America.

During their brief visit the filmmakers sat for a brief Q&A with DFP staff before their screening.

DFP: Before I became a documentary  filmmaker I was a…

Dean Hamer:  Molecular biologist: I researched and authored nonfiction books on genetics and human behavior.   I’m best known for my work on the biological basis of sexual orientation and the discovery of the “gay gene” .I got involved in the media business because of the uproar over the “gay gene” and how often the story was misreported and misrepresented.   I first wrote a book called The Science of Desire, and more recently started making films because of their incredible power to bring to life complex and nuanced aspects of the human condition.

Joe Wilson: I’ve been a human rights activist and was a program officer for human rights at two private foundations over the past 20 years.

DFP: When Obama became President of the United States, old timers were asked how long had they thought it would take for America to have a Black President.  How long do you think it will take for C.J., the young man in your film,  and others like him to have legal marriage rights?

Joe Wilson: Well, for us, this isn’t a film just about marriage. It’s really about something much more basic, and important: the right of GLBT people to live freely and openly wherever they happen to be without fear of losing friends, family or jobs and sometimes their very lives simply for being who they are. Recognition of rights and protections are important, and help in creating social change, but we’ve got much more to do to ensure that such changes mean something to those living in more isolated and conservative areas, particularly the rural and small town America.

Dean Hamer: How long will it take? It might be two or three years or it might be 32 years or eight presidential terms. Social acceptance will take much longer if ever. Sexuality is such a strong drive and forms so early, there will always be people who are uncomfortable with whatever they themselves don’t like to do.

Joe Wilson: Oh, I disagree.  I don’t think it will take that long at all.  I’d say within the current presidential term, four-eight years.  With someone like Obama in the White House, and given the social forces that elected him, anything is possible.  Of course, there will be the social resistance, and people with a vested interest in whatever the “ism” happens to be. But we’ve got to take advantage of this moment of opportunity to educate, agitate, organize, and advocate for the change that we know is possible…legal rights are on their way.

DFP: The last Census to include any GLBT survey at all was in 2000 (George Bush removed it from 2005 Census). At that time there were 600, 000 same sex couples in cohabitation. Activists are fighting to get GLBT questions on the 2010 Census. What do you think that snapshot might capture?

Dean Hamer: I think it will show more and more same sex couples cohabitating,  and not just in New York or Provincetown or San Francisco, but  throughout the entire nation. That’s one of the things that anti-gay political forces don’t want people to know: Same sex couples are not a freak show limited to big cities. They are a part of the fabric of our country. There is less to be afraid of than they want you to believe.

Joe Wilson: The right wing that is active against GLBT people like to talk about numbers as a way to minimize rights. (”See!  Kinsey was wrong, they’re only 2-3 % of the population.”) But, is  there a minimum number of people for whom rights matter? The Jewish population in this country is only about 2%, but their rights do matter. The same can be said for GLBT people.

DFP: Any funny stories along the way of making this film, or “out takes” that didn’t make it in the movie?

Dean Hamer: The funniest part of the whole story is that when we decided to get married, Joe insisted on having no public ceremony, no gifts, no reception, etc. Just us and two good friends as witnesses. Joe truly doesn’t like attention paid to him. But he didn’t tell me we would spend the next five years of our lives making a film about it and trying to tell the whole world!

Other Articles

• A Tale of Three Sisters
• Ferraro Blogs from Skoll World Forum
• Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
• The Oath
• Waiting For Armageddon
• Last Train Home
• The Reckoning to broadcast on P.O.V. Tuesday, July 14th
• This Is My Picture When I Was Dead

During the meeting Iskander told Gore that the award will do more to raise awareness about the plight of the Zaballeen community in Cairo, than the last twenty years of efforts by others less visible who are committed to their  economic survival. Garbage Dreams premiered at SXSW in March to sold out screenings and continues a successful Festival run.

To learn more about the Zaballeen and ways you can help, visit  www.garbagedreams.com

Other Articles

• The Axe In The Attic
• Meet The Filmmaker — Rick Perez
• Artist Blog From the Sundance Documentary Edit Lab
• Meet The Filmmaker — Molly O’Brian
• 9 Star Hotel
• Family; The First Circle
• New Muslim Cool
• The Visitors

When the daughter of Dr. Jack Kessler, a respected neurologist,  is paralyzed with a spinal cord injury, he enters the unknown territory of stem cell research, navigating its promises and its perils. MAPPING STEM CELL RESEARCH: TERRA INCOGNITA follows his complex journey through a scientific, ethical and moral landscape. Read more about the film and watch a preview at Independent Lens>>

Maria Finitzo has been an award-winning filmmaker for 25 years. She directs and produces films for network television, public broadcasting and cable television markets. She produced and directed NO DIRECTION HOME about young people aging out of foster care, and 5 GIRLS, is a feature-length documentary that delves into the hearts and minds of five remarkable young women. The film was a special presentation of P.O.V. and premiered in 2001. MAPPING STEM CELL RESEARCH: TERRA INCOGNITA was also supported by ITVS, produced in association with Kartemquin Educational Films and broadcast on Independent Lens.

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