Filmmakers & Videographers
Who Highlight Marriage Equality
The artists on these pages have incorporated the issue of marriage equality into their films, movies and videos. They are supporters of equality for all, including the acknowledgement of all loving relationships and access to civil marriage for all committed adult couples who wish to marry. We hope you enjoy their work - please encourage and support their art!
Two Dads
By Filming Guy Images:
We are dedicated professional individuals trying to break into the Hollywood industry who want to use our talents to help shape the Marriage Equality Movement. Our group includes directors, directors of photography, costume designers, production assistants and set designers, make-up artists, editors, and actors.
Nationwide, same-sex proponents have revealed their courage to fight for our families. We have with pride raised awareness, support in the form of volunteers who work tirelessly, developed educational materials and have held rallies. We have debated in official forums and answered media requests. We have held thousands of personal conversations about the importance of marriage equality in labor halls, restaurants, parks, community events and homes.The Marriage Equality Movement has made the remarkable journey of transforming itself into the mainstream.
We want the conversation to continue. We want members of our community to show our families in campaign ads that seek support for our rights. We want to show the devotion and love that an LGBT family can accurately provide.
We hope to inspire you not to be afraid to show ourselves. We hope you agree that we are ready to be the main focus in our own commercials winning our rights. Our hope is that you will want to join us in support of these types of video projects. We are seeking donations as well as input into the best way to achieve marriage equality in all 50 states.
The Filmmakers
Ken Schuyler Producer of the video short Two Dads. Ken supports the end of DOMA and marriage equality. He graduated from Pasadena City College with an AA and received his BS from Military University. Ken wanted to use his talents to support marriage equality after taking film classes. He wanted to work to bring back same-sex marriage to his home state of CA after the passage of Proposition 8. He currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona and was horrified to see his new state also pass a law banning same-sex marriage. He is hoping to counter the lies perpetuated by those opposed to same-sex marriage by offering a glimpse into the lives of a gay family as portrayed in the video. He believes that many Arizonians do not know LGBT people personally and therefore are subject to fear mongering regarding same-sex marriage. Ken believes this video will help to dismiss those myths.
John Lincoln John currently lives in Signal Hill (Long Beach, CA). He graduated from CSULB in political science. He has been fighting against Proposition 8 by being active in Love Honor Cherish - he collected over 4,000 signatures in an attempt to put the repeal of Prop 8 on the ballot in 2010. John is currently a co-Chapter Leader with MEUSA in L.A. County. John wanted to do the short film because he noticed that the ads in campaigns to stop same-sex marriage bans (or the recent ads supporting propositions to make same-sex marriage legal) have featured straight allies speaking for the LGBT community. He thinks that’s great, but actual members of our LGBT community are missing from those ads – people speaking up directly for their own rights. John wanted to make a video with a different approach. He wanted to feature real gay people showcasing our lives and promoting what a typical gay family looks like. This gay family isn’t threatening - one father takes their daughter to soccer games and out for dinner, while the other strolls to the park with the younger child and later reads a story to the kids before bed time. This is the message John wanted to make regarding the marriage equality movement.
Stewart Wade The director of Two Dads, Stewart also produced and directed the feature films Coffee Date and Tru Loved. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he attended UCLA and studied play writing. Stewart raised one son who can relate to some of the scenes in the video. He wanted to direct the video because it relates to his activism in causes such as fighting the horrendous anti-gay bill in Uganda, passing ENDA, repealing DOMA and fighting Proposition 8. Stewart was simply grateful for the chance to help produce such a wonderful video showcasing two gay fathers in an everyday situation – the reality that does not get a lot of press.
Tom Soporito Tom is the blond actor in the Two Dads video. He is a recent transplant to California from Pennsylvania. He currently works as an actor for a healthcare company that makes educational videos for doctors and nurses. Tom lives in Los Angeles and is just getting use to the idea of making the area his home. He wanted to play one of the fathers because, despite his youth, he often thinks about becoming a father himself one day. Tom is an avid supporter of marriage equality.
John Halbach: John plays the other father in the video Two Dads. He hails from Minnesota. John wanted to be in the video as a way to actively participate in supporting marriage equality. Many of his family members and friends joined the campaign in Minnesota to successfully defeat the proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriage in that state. Even though John now lives in CA, he is hoping the voters back home in Minnesota will now move forward to pass a law legalizing same-sex marriage there.
Black and White Laws in a Colorful World
Jason Brickhill's short film Black and White Laws in a Colorful World is an experimental, surrealistic film about equality, expressing the importance of equal rights for all. In a world where discrimination is one of it's largest issues, Black and White Laws in a Colorful World explores how society's support for equality is rapidly growing yet old and discriminative laws and anti-gay government views are not changing at the same rate or are not changing at all.
Jason Brickhill, a young Australian filmmaker, living in New York City, uses filmmaking as a way to express himself, his thoughts, feelings and outlook on the world.
Jason's website: http://jasonbrickhill.com
On Facebook: http://facebook.com/EqualityFilm
Call Me Kuchu
With unprecedented access, Call Me Kuchu depicts the last year in the life of David Kato, a courageous, quick-witted and steadfast man whose wisdom and achievements were not fully recognized until after his death. While heartbreaking, the documentary traces a narrative that takes the viewer beyond the chronicle of victimization depicted in international news media: it tells the nuanced story of David and Kampala’s kuchus as they work to change their fate, and that of other kuchus across Africa.
A story told in his words, David Kato’s final testimony lives on in this film, while his work is continued by the fellow activists he left behind.
The Filmmakers
KATHERINE FAIRFAX WRIGHT [DIRECTOR, DP, EDITOR]
Katherine Fairfax Wright graduated from Columbia University with a double major in Film Studies and Anthopology. She produced Gabi On The Roof In July, which premiered at Cinequest 2010, and won Best Narrative at the Brooklyn Film Festival. Wright has worked closely with Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, Nelson Walker III, and Fellipe Barbosa. She associate-produced Perlmutt and Walker’s award-winning documentary Lumo, which aired on P.O.V., as well as Perlmutt’s Les Vulnerables, the closing short at the New York Film Festival 2007. Wright has worked in a producing role on several other films and she is an award-winning photographer. She is a Chaz & Roger Ebert Directing Fellow, and an alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab and the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant.
MALIKA ZOUHALI-WORRALL [DIRECTOR, PRODUCER]
Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s work as a print and video journalist has been published in The Financial Times and at CNN.com. She has reported for CNN.com from India, Uganda, China and the U.S. on politics, technology and LGBT rights. Zouhali-Worrall is a graduate of Cambridge University and holds an MA in International Affairs from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). She is also a Chaz & Roger Ebert Directing Fellow, and an alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab and the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant.
Tying the Knot
When a bank robber's bullet ends the life of police officer Lois Marrero, her wife of thirteen years, Mickie, is honored as her surviving spouse but denied all pension benefits. When Sam, an Oklahoma rancher, loses his beloved husband of 22 years, long-estranged cousins of his late spouse try to lay claim to everything Sam has. As Mickie and Sam's lives are put on trial, they are forced to confront the tragic reality that in the eyes of the law their marriages mean nothing. From an historical trip to the Middle Ages, to gay hippies storming the Manhattan marriage bureau in 1971, the 2004 documentary Tying the Knot digs deeply into the past and present to uncover the meaning of civil marriage in America today.
The filmmaker, Jim de Sève: Working from the frontlines of independent filmmaking, Jim de Sève is the chronicler of America’s new culture war‚ the divisive battle over marriage. Based in Brooklyn, NYC, de Sève has shot and produced work for Nickelodeon, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. De Sève’s documentary, Burying the Saints, is a personal portrait of his eccentric aunts’ search for lost history. In his PBS short, Sigrid and Rudi Do New York, two Bavarian tourists experience danger and love in New York’s mean, magical streets. He was the Director of Photography for Seeds, about a revolutionary summer camp for ethnic enemies and he also teaches courses in digital filmmaking and directing documentaries at Film Video Arts in New York. Tying the Knot takes ‘activist filmmaking’ back to its roots of affecting lasting change, and building a community network through the filmmaker’s vision of social justice.
Snag Films: Our mission is to bring the world of independent film to broader audiences everywhere we can: a global digital theater showcasing the movies themselves, as well as the information and extras that enriches and provides context – from film reviews and festival coverage to interviews and opinion pieces. We are a new kind of media company – one that selects the best films and related content so you don’t have to wade through all that clutter; that makes it easy for you to enjoy now, to return later and to share it all with your friends; and that takes it to the next level – not just talking about making the world a better place, but actually doing it … and giving you all sorts of choices for you to make an impact personally. We measure ourselves on a double-bottom-line: we want to continue the growth in the number of films we distribute and the views of those films as well the revenues we make for filmmakers (and our company) -- and we want to empower individuals and communities to make a difference.
PINK & GREEN
Pink & Green was created to highlight the unfair situation that American LGBT people and their non-American partners are in - being forced apart by DOMA and inability of American LGBT people to sponsor their foreign-born partners for immigration and citizenship. Pink & Green brings this situation to light and strives to help the fight for justice and equality. The movie will picture not only the desperation of a couple threatened to be a part after years together but also how things can go wrong when you try to deceive the system. It’s a call for awareness and a message in support of the UAFA and RMA because we all deserve to be treated equally.
Gustavo Marcolla (Creator, Co-producer & Lead Actor) and Elias Ribeiro (Creative director & Producer) are Brazilian filmmakers who co-created Pink & Green about a Brazilian man living in Los Angeles with his American partner.
"and yet"
A video appeal to those running for office and to those serving in public office. Created by Artie Van Why
Artie Van Why lived in New York City for 26 years before moving to Lancaster, PA in the Fall of 2003. He was present near the World Trade Center the morning of 9/11 and is one of the countless survivors of that day.
Artie wrote the book That Day In September; which chronicles the events of that morning and the weeks and months following. The book is an adaptation of a one man play Artie wrote, by the same name, which he performed in L.A. and Off-Broadway in New York before leaving the city. He is still committed to sharing his story of that day; in an effort to assure we never forget.
Artie is passionate about civil rights for the LGBT community; including marriage equality and advocating for LGBT people of faith. He strives to break through the walls of resistance that the “church” and “religion” have erected over the years. Walls, that Artie believes, are beginning to show signs of crumbling.
The Right to Love: An American Family
Documentary Film (88 minutes)
http://www.jayebirdproductions.com/
Synopsis: While the passionate debate over the legitimacy of marriage equality in the United States rages on, the LGBT community continues to fight for their slice of the American dream. Powered by media, religion and influential anti-gay organizations, the civil right of marriage continues to be held just out of reach for many LGBT citizens. The Right To Love: An American Family chronicles one story of courage born out of the highly mediatized and controversial Prop 8 2008 election results in California. A private Californian married gay couple and their two adopted children fight back against discrimination, ignorance and hate through home videos posted on their YouTube channel, 'Gay Family Values'. As they pursue their American Dream, the opposing political, social and religious opinions that pervade society attempts to strip it from them.
Featuring: The Leffew Family ("Gay Family Values")
Director: Cassie Jaye
Producers: Christina Clack, Cassie Jaye, Nena Jaye, Jay Pugh, Ford Austin, Matthew Mason, Marc Wasserman
Composer: Edwin Wendler
Music Department: James Fitzpatrick, Jan Holzner, Jakub Mayer, Herman Owen
Sound Department: Mac Smith, Steve Orlando, Frank Clary, Sean England, Ronni Pitman, Charlotte Moore
Visual Effects: Tony Hudson
Additional Camera: Sean Chapin, Chase Whiteside, Erick Stoll (New Left Media), Nathan Haugaard
Entry Denied: A Documentary About Us
Entry Denied, a documentary film 10 years in the making, is about our struggles. As same-sex binational couples in committed and life-affirming relationships, we are constantly reminded that our options are limited. Entry Denied follows three same-sex binational couples during the past decade and their constant ebb and flow between joy and heartache. At the present moment one couple has made the decision to live in exile in Canada, one couple remains in a long distance relationship and one couple was unable to leave the US to attend a loving father’s funeral. Similar to Judy Rickard’s book Torn Apart and Sebastian Cordoba’s film Through Thick and Thin, Entry Denied continues to propel our message that, we all deserve the right to be with the person we love.
“We have always lamented the fact that our stories are not often told by the media. Projects like Entry Denied have the potential for wide distribution and increases the chance of more people learning about the discrimination we face and taking an active role in changing the laws that continue to separate our families,” says Out4Immigration’s Amos Lim, a champion of the film and of its director.
Entry Denied is Machu’s first film and has attached to it two-time Academy Award winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (HOWL, The Celluloid Closet, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, The Times of Harvey Milk) are the Executive Producers.
More information about the project is located here: Entry Denied
Machu Latorre, Director, Producer, Editor
Machu Latorre was born in southern Spain. Moved by her passion for film, she relocated to the US when she was 19. Since an early age, she has been in love with filmmaking. She studied photography in Spain, and later earned her film degree at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. In 2001, while acting as the Int'l representative for the Madrid Gay & Lesbian Int'l Film Festival, she met Academy Award Winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. That same year, she joined their production company Telling Pictures, where she worked for several years. She earned an Associate Producer role in the series Life 360, which aired on PBS in 2002. She worked as an editor for various Telling Picture projects, including the special features for the DVD releases of The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads: Stories from the quilt, and Where Are We.
Entry Denied: http://entrydeniedmovie.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Entry-Denied-film-by-Machu-Latorre/227900400554704?sk=info
twitter.com: http://twitter.com/#!/Entry_Denied
Watch the trailer on YouTube
Reverend Alexandra McCartney is an Episcopal priest known for her progressive sermons, who faces down right wing protesters on the Iowa Supreme Court steps and always knows what is right. But when she begins working for gay marriage in Iowa she has no idea she’s fighting for her own daughter. Sarah comes out to her and a few days later flies home to Iowa with her way out, butch, radical girlfriend; and Sarah wants her mother to marry them, in the Episcopal Church. Never mind that Reverend Alex has already stirred feelings of animosity in her congregation with her social justice homilies, never mind that Reverend Alex’s own marriage has problems, these are things that she can handle. Only Sarah’s visit home forces Reverend Alexandra to learn that it’s easier to live up to her values when she’s just the minister, not the mother. As Reverend Alex clashes with her husband, church, and daughter’s lifestyle she faces the ultimate choice: will she lose her daughter or the spiritual life she loves?
LYRALEN KAYE – WRITER, FILMMAKER
Lyralen Kaye founded Another Country Films in 2009 when she co-produced her first short film, Triangles Are More Interesting, with Elton James of Little Bite Productions. Lyralen’s history as a producer, however, started in 2003, when she founded the multicultural and diverse theatre company, Another Country Productions, in Boston. The company quickly became known for its multicultural theatre production,SLAMBoston, Diverse Voices in Theatre, which continues to sell out every production. Lyralen produced 28 slam events, 3 full length plays, professional readings for the screen and numerous readings for the stage before turning her attention to film making. An award-winning writer, Lyralen was nominated for nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction in 1997, won the Amazon Poetry Finals in 1998, and went on to win the Stanley and Eleanor Lipkin Prize in Playwriting in 2002 before coming in as a finalist for the Massachusetts Council of the Arts Awards in 2005. The script for her film Saint John the Divine in Iowa, a story about gay marriage in Iowa, is currently a semi-finalist in the Pride Plays and Films Contest "Women's Work" and a finalist for the Roy Dean Grant. A long-time activist for equal marriage, Lyralen is a professional actress (SAG/AFTRA) whose performances critics in Boston have described as “carefully nuanced,” “perfectly pitched” and “deeply moving.” She can be seen in 27 Dresses as Katherine Heigl’s gong-banging yoga instructor.
CHANGE
Check out the trailer and find out where to go see Change at the movie's official website: www.afilmforchange.com
Jamie is an African-American teenager grappling with his sexual identity on the night Barrack Obama is elected president and Proposition 8 - the voter initiative to eliminate same-sex marriage – is passed. When one of his gang initiates the bullying of an openly gay classmate, Jamie uses his wits to try and prevent it, but when things don’t go the way he predicted, he is forced to face his fears head on. Award winning short film CHANGE is a drama that explores the irony of Proposition 8 passing on the same day that America elected its first Black president: all seen through the eyes of a black, gay teen. CHANGE is a beautiful, heartbreaking story that will reignite the frustration and disappointment that so many Californians felt that next morning.
With passionate proponents and defenders of gay marriage, and especially with the spate of teen suicides throughout 2010, the filmmakers hope that CHANGE might provide a safe vehicle for an audience to consider how subtle and insidious the specter of discrimination is. CHANGE not only addresses the themes of prejudice, sexual identity and human rights but also explores the less talked about problems of gay bullying in the African American community.
MELISSA OSBORNE – WRITER/PRODUCER/DIRECTOR
After graduating from the University of London Melissa went to work in television; launching interactive digital TV channels to niche markets in the UK. Melissa then left the business world to pursue her acting career. In between acting projects Melissa Launched ‘Actors Platform’ - a theatre company that runs monthly shows and workshops in London to promote actors to industry professionals. Actors Platform is now in its 5th year and earned Melissa the award of Best Producer from the London Fringe Awards.
In 2006 Melissa moved to Los Angeles, where she works full time on writing, producing and directing film. Melissa worked with Co-Director Jeff McCutcheon on her first short film Nothing in 2007 which she wrote, co-directed and produced and which premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival. Melissa recently finished the Professional Producing Program at UCLA and is currently writing two feature films.
Previous Directing Work: NOTHING (Short) 2008 (HD)
JEFF MCCUTCHEON – DIRECTOR/CINEMATOGRAPHER/ EDITOR
Jeff McCutcheon graduated with honors in psychology from Anderson University. Since then he has worked on over 20 feature films, most recently as the director of photography for the award-winning Jeffie Was Here (www.jeffiewashere.com), Leading Ladies, staring Benji Schwimmer and the upcoming feature film Haze. He co-directed Newport Beach International Film Festival entry Nothing with Melissa Osborne. He has authored 7 screenplays, and was a finalist at the American Accolades and Scriptapalooza screenwriting competitions. In his spare time he writes for a political blog, The Nightly Read www.nightlyread.com. Previous Directing Work: NOTHING (Short) 2008 (HD)
Love is All You Need?
How Would You Live if You Couldn’t Love?
Just imagine...
Imagine a world where 'Straight' was considered 'gay' - and 'gay' was 'straight'
A world where it was taboo for a woman and a man to fall in love
A world where 'same sex marriage' was the only way in which society would permit you to love.
A world where who you love defines who you are.
Love is All You Need? tells the story of Ashley, a young teen who is raised in the ‘picture perfect all-American family’ – with two moms, two grandpas, two uncles, and a little brother... But Ashley has a problem – she has a crush on a boy at school..., which is against everything this world has ever taught her. This undeniable attraction to the opposite sex causes her to be the constant target of verbal and physical abuse until she is driven to a tragic end.
Check out the offical trailer, see behind the scenes footage and more on the movie's official website: www.loveisallyouneedthemovie.com
This film challenges our current conceptions of these phrases by switching, not only their meanings, but also the culturally instigated conditions that are commonly paired with the phrases; like suicide in response to bullying. This film hopes to shed light onto the highly controversial issue of human and equal rights in the LBGT Community, and also raise awareness to our current world as to the obstacles that this community faces.
What is a world where you cannot love whom you wish?
Love is all you need? takes this question and tips it on its head; revealing the backwardness of our own society in matters of love, acceptance and freedom of choice.
“While this film will undoubtedly cause some uneasiness to its viewers, perhaps that is exactly what it is meant to do” says director Kim Rocco Shields about making the audience feel as uneasy as society currently makes LGBT people feel.
WingSpan Pictures, the company behind Shields, and also her last project My Jane Doe a controversial video testimonial about the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy in the military, is the main creative force behind the short. WingSpan is not only asking for help with the funding, but also is reaching out for support from local artists, musicians, actors and crewmembers help make the film be a layered creative endeavor. “A community effort is needed for this community problem”, says Shields. All who are interested in donating their time or help funding to this film should contact the WingSpan Pictures Offices at info@wingspanpictures.com.
