PRIDE GUIDE 1997 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE C-15
Film and video salute is TV show's Pride special
The June 1997 gay pride edition of In the Life, public TV's national gay and lesbian newsmagazine, examines the world of gay and lesbian film and video.
From documentaries to educational videos to independent films, gay men and lesbians are producing work that is vastly different in scope, ranging from the hilarious to the thoughtprovoking to the disturbingly serious.
In each project, however, the mission to provide visibility to and information about the gay and lesbian community remains constant. In this episode In the Life salutes that mission with a glimpse into these efforts. Included is a preview of the long-awaited film Love! Valour! Compassion! based on Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play.
The only Ohio station that carries In the Life is WNEO/WEAO Channels 45 and 49 in Akron and Youngstown, which can also be seen on many Cleveland area cable systems. They will air the show at midnight Sunday, June 29.
Correspondents Darius de Haas, Tanya Barfield and Alan Tulin join host Katherine Linton for these other stories on In the Life's June '97 gay pride special:
The episode begins with clips from two award-winning documentaries. Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End by Lesli Klainberg and Monte Bramer is a provocative and deeply personal film biography of the late gay writer and activist Paul Monette. The film explores
a lot of narrow people," said filmmaker Dunye.
Love! Valour! Compassion! tells of eight gay men who face love, infidelity, middle-age, AIDS, and the warm reality of their undying friendship, all over three holiday summer weekends. In the Life talks to the cast, which includes Jason Alexander from NBC's Seinfeld, John Glover, Randy Becker, and two-time Tony Award winner Stephen Spinella.
"I've never had to look at another man and play what are essentially love scenes,” said Jason Alexander about his role in the film. "It's unusual to have that challenge as an actor, but I'm also falling in love with John Glover and it ain't hard!"
While many films are meant for large national audiences, some are meant to create change on a more local level. People have long understood the power of video to disseminate information and spark discussion. Clips of three such videos make up this segment. All attempt to educate diverse audiences through quality production, targeted distribution, and the presenting of rarely discussed information.
Risk: Lesbians and AIDS by Janet Baus is designed to be used by AIDS educators to challenge the myth that lesbians are not at risk for the HIV virus. Only Human: HIV Negative Gay Men in the AIDS Epidemic by loannis Mookas focuses on the complexity of being an HIV negative gay man, yet profoundly affected by the AIDS crisis.
IN THE LIFE
ANGIE ROSGA
Filmaker Arthur Dong (r) and director of photography Robert Shepard.
contest. And the winner is: Junky Punky Girlz director Nisha Ganatra. Her film spins a thought-provoking and extremely amusing tale of three friends, a couple of nose rings, a concerned mother, a birthday and a filet-o-fish sandwich.
Caught between American pop culture and her traditional Indian heritage, the main character Anita attempts to pierce her nose. Ganatra says her motivation for making the film comes from being both lesbian and South Asian.
"The inspiration for making Junky Punky Girlz was the isolation that I was feeling being in a space between two cultures."
Finally, this edition of In the Life looks at "a day in the life" of a strong woman who works in the entertainment business. This month this regular "day in the life" segment
is devoted to Donna Isman, an openly lesbian ́manager at E! Entertainment Network in Los Angeles.
Isman is currently fighting stage-four ovarian cancer and statistically she has only a five percent chance to survive. But Isman does not fit easily into any statistical category.
"The second the doctor told me I had cancer, that reaction saved my life because that's when I decided: No need to panic. What can we do?" Isman said.
In the Life, produced by the not-for-profit In the Life Media Inc., airs on nearly 100 public television stations, including 19 of the top 20 markets, and celebrates its fifth anniversary this June. A complete list of national airdates be found on the Web at http://inthelifetv.org.
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Junky Punky Girlz Cathy Cohen, Reena Benjamin and Shauna Croom.
Monette's life from his seemingly idyllic New England boyhood and his closeted adolescence to his development into a successful writer, committed lover and activist, until his death from AIDS in February 1995.
Licensed to Kill by Arthur Dong is a riveting look into the minds of men who murder gay men. Through interviews with prisoners and archival crime footage, Dong examines these horrifying accounts of violence. One convicted killer says, "I don't have any opinion whatsoever about homosexuals, except that they ought to be taken care of."
Both of these films were featured in the Ten Percent Cinema portion of this year's Cleveland International Film Festival.
As powerful as those types of films can be, they often run into funding trouble when conservative politicians become aware of them. In recent years the debate over federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts has ebbed and flowed in the public eye, while raging on behind congressional doors. In the Life will look at some of the projects currently under attack, such as Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman, Su Friedrich's Hide and Seek, Tina Difeliciantonio's Two or Three Things But Nothing for Sure, and the distributor of some of these films, Woman Make Movies, which recently lost its NEA funding.
The NEA battle has even reached as far as art museums that sponsor film festivals with gay and lesbian entries. U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said on the House floor, "The Watermelon Woman is a vulgar and offensive work that our taxpayers' dollars should not be subsidizing.”
"I don't really know how we are going to fight back against this kind of attack. There are
The final film, The Rhetoric of Intolerance: An Open-Letter Video to Pat Robertson from Dr. Mel White is a message from White, of the gay and lesbian Metropolitan Community Church, to the founder of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network.
White was the ghostwriter of Robertson's autobiography, but since 1993 has worked tirelessly for equal justice for gay and lesbian Americans.
In the Life gives special honor to one director from its national short film and video
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