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Dear New Day Films customers:
This fall, we’re releasing 11 new films – and one of our films was nominated for a national Emmy. Watch http://www.newday.com for the latest on new films, educational resources and news about New Day Films – the only distribution company run by the filmmakers themselves.
In this Fall 2004 issue of the New Day Films e-newsletter you’ll find:
We’re proud to have three of the hottest new films about lesbian and gay life: One Wedding and a Revolution, Butch Mystique and Laramie Inside Out. We are also debuting two award-winning films on the “justice system”: A Hard Straight and Girl Trouble. Three other new releases -- Wet Dreams and False Images; Still Doing It: The Intimate Lives of Women over 65 and In the Name of Love – deal with body image, senior sexuality and the globalization of marriage. Two other moving films -- Father’s Day and Liberty: Three Stories of Life and Death, examine dying, family and community. And last but not least is Spit It Out – a poignantly funny portrait of a stutterer’s self-acceptance. Full film descriptions and prices are below.
This fall, Let’ Get Real and The Smith Family are out on DVD. Check http://www.newday.com for whether your favorite VHS title has been released yet on DVD.
Get 10-15% off at New Day Films
Emmy anyone? What’s new from your favorite filmmakers?
A Hard Straight by Goro Toshima
A gang member, a hustler, and a small-time dealer. They served their sentences, they're on parole. Now they're about to discover that walking out the prison gates is just the beginning. Of the 500,000 people released from prison annually, more than 50% return within 90 days of release. Beginning on their first day of freedom, A Hard Straight follows three ex-offenders as they face the challenges of returning to the outside world. A Hard Straight is an intimate portrait of life on the outside.
“Stingingly indicts this grotesque system…but simultaneously doesn’t flinch from depicting the unjustified self-pity and pathetic rationalizations.”
LA Weekly
"Riveting...within three years, 40% of parolees will be back in prison. Academics, politicians, and government officials have long struggled with the question of why. Toshima has created an honest and intimate film packed with much needed answers."
The Village Voice
South by Southwest Film Festival,
Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature
Chicago International Documentary Festival
IFP/Los Angeles Independent Film Festival
Butch Mystique by Debra Wilson
Butch Mystique exposes the rules, thoughts, passions, and concerns of African American butch-stud, identified lesbians. Women from varying backgrounds “as mothers, activists, and artists” share raw, powerful and intimate thoughts on being outside the norm, being powerful butch-identified women and being themselves.
SHOWTIME: Black Filmmaker Showcase
Best Short/Audience Award,
San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Best Short/Audience Award
Outfest Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Short Subject Documentary;
Starz Denver Pan African Film Festival
Mill Valley Film Festival
Hollywood Black Film Festival
National and International Gay & Lesbian Film Festivals
Father's Day by Mark Lipman
Haunted by his inability to prevent his father's death over thirty years ago, director Mark Lipman looks back at its impact and uncovers more than he bargained for. What begins as a memorial to his father evolves into a moving exploration of grief, depression, the vagaries of memory and the veneer of family normalcy. There are no easy answers or tidy conclusions and so the film creates an unusual space for viewers to reflect upon their own lives.
“An amazing accomplishment. Father’s Day is an intensely personal film that will speak to anyone exploring the imprint of their parents on their own lives.”
Bo Smith, Film Curator
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
SilverDocs (AFI/Discovery Channel)
Rhode Island International Film Festival
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Girl Trouble by Lidia Sazjko and Lexi Leban
Girl Trouble is an intimate portrait of three girls who go in and out of the juvenile justice system over four years, facing heartbreaking setbacks and surprising successes. Their struggles with poverty, parenthood, violence and homelessness expose a system that fails to meet the needs of girls in trouble. Trying to stay out of jail, the girls work at the Center for Young Women’s Development, an organization run by young women like them. As the girls confront pivotal decisions, the Center’s 22-year-old leader, Lateefah Simon, is often their only support.
“Heart-wrenching and inspiring, the movie does a terrific job of conveying the girls' nightmarishly complicated situations without demonizing judges and prosecutors or sentimentalizing its subjects.”
San Francisco Weekly
“A fine documentary about "at risk" kids…Fast-moving... a natural for public TV slots and educational outreach. “
Variety
Golden Gate Award,
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco Black Film Festival
In the Name of Love by Shannon O’Rourke
What’s motivating the thousands of Russian women who sign up with agencies to meet and marry American men? From the gray skies of St. Petersburg to sunny California ranches, we see the financial and emotional pros and cons of exporting one’s heart. The film grapples with the tremendous economic challenges and difficult decisions facing Russian women today. In the Name of Love is perfect for courses in Women’s Studies, Russian Studies, Sociology, Psychology and Family Studies.
“… an amazing job in bringing the ‘mail-order bride’ genre to the screen.”
Sydney Pollack, Director
Laramie Inside Out by Beverly Seckinger
In October 1998, Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die. His shocking murder pushed Laramie into the media spotlight and sparked a nationwide debate about homophobia, gay-bashing and hate crimes. Filmmaker Beverly Seckinger, a Laramie native, returns home to the site of her own closeted adolescence to investigate the impact of Shepard's murder. She encounters students, teachers, parents, and clergy suddenly moved to speak out and take social action.
“With warmth, humor, and insight, Bev Seckinger gives us a vision of Laramie that few have imagined...A lovely, loving testament.”
Beth Loffreda, Author, Losing Matt Shepard
“Demonstrates how grace and honesty can overcome bigotry and fear in the aftermath of great tragedy.”
Cathy Renna
Former News Media Director
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Best of Arizona award, Arizona International Film Festival Official Selection
San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Liberty: Three Stories of Life and Death by Pam Walton
This unusual work interweaves the stories of three close lesbian friends: Joyce Fulton, 66, who died over the course of two years from a brain tumor; Mary Bell Wilson, 79, who, with indefatigable courage, faces up to her losing struggle with lymphoma; and Nan Golub, 58, a black-leather-jacketed, platinum-dyed New York City artist, very much alive. Liberty demystifies death, dispels misinformation about age and sexual orientation, and reminds us that life is worth living, even worth celebrating.
ASA-NCOA Joint Conference, Philadelphia
InFACT Theatrical Documentary Showcase
Brooklyn Academy of Music Film Series
InSideOut, Toronto
Outfest, LA
NewFest, NYC
One Wedding and a Revolution by Debra Chasnoff
On February 12, 2004, the mayor of San Francisco ordered city officials to allow lesbian and gay couples to get married. Pioneering activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, celebrating their 51st anniversary, had the privilege of being the first couple to tie the knot. One Wedding and a Revolution goes behind the scenes at the mayor’s office during the frantic days leading up to February 12th, and into city hall with exclusive footage of this momentous historical event.
“One Wedding and a Revolution charts a history no one will forget. It brilliantly captures one of the most important moments in our civil rights struggle with two icons of our movement as its stars.”
Kate Kendell, Executive Director
National Center for Lesbian Rights
Spit it Out by Jonathan Skurnik
Spit It Out is a funny and poignant portrait of Jeff Shames’s successful efforts to come to terms with his stutter and his family’s legacy of denial. Jeff’s father is intolerant of and rageful towards his son’s imperfections, while his mother never discusses her own childhood stutter. As a teenager Jeff turns to alcohol and drugs to mask his shame, and eventually marries an alcoholic who interacts with the outside world for him. After his wife gets sober, Jeff discovers the stuttering self-help community and embarks on a healing journey of sobriety, self-acceptance and forgiveness.
“Spit It Out is an amazingly powerful, emotional, artistic piece of work. It must have been a journey of the soul to make it. I’m sure it will be a journey of the soul for those who see it.”
Dr. Phillip Schneider
Professor of Speech and Language Pathology
Queens College, NY
Still Doing It by Diedre Fishel
Flying in the face of this culture's extreme ageism, Still Doing It explores the lives of older women. Partnered, single, straight, gay, black and white, nine extraordinary women, age 67-87, express with startling honesty and humor how they feel about themselves, sex and love in later life and the poignant realities of aging. Outspoken for their generation, these women mark a sea change. Women over 65 are the fastest-growing segment of the population, and when the baby boomers turn 65 in 2011, their numbers will swell. Still Doing It looks at this society's complex relationship to women and aging with revelatory results.
“Still Doing It shatters stereotypes while celebrating old age. It's touching, humorous and gives an aging nation hope for fun in the future. ”
John McMurtrie, S.F. Chronicle
Wet Dreams and False Images by Jess Epstein
Dee-Dee, a Brooklyn barber, covers his wall with magazine cut-outs of women. He wishes that real women could look more like the images on his “wall of beauty.” However, when Dee-Dee is introduced to the art of photoretouching, his perceptions of beauty are called into question. Wet Dreams and False Images is an award-winning film that uses humor to raise serious concerns about the marketplace of commercial illusion and unrealizable standards of physical perfection.
2004 Sundance Online Film Festival, Short Subject Jury Award
Chlotrudis Film Festival, Audience Award
Urban Literary Film Festival, Best Use of Technology
Student Academy Award Nominee
Let's Get Real by Debra Chasnoff, Helen S. Cohen, and Kate Stilley
Name-calling and bullying have reached epidemic proportions in schools today. Let's Get Real gives young people the chance to speak up in their own words about the real issues behind the problem. With amazing courage and candor, the students featured in Let’s Get Real discuss racial differences, perceived sexual orientation, disabilities, religious differences, sexual harassment and more. From the youth who are targeted, to the students who pick on them, to those who find the courage to intervene, Let’s Get Real examines bullying from the full range of perspectives. This poignant film educates audiences of all ages about why we can no longer accept name-calling and bullying as just a normal rite of passage.
The Smith Family by Tasha Oldham
The Smiths of Salt Lake City may have America’s most common surname, but their story is anything but ordinary. With two boys, a dog, a nice house and a strong commitment to the Mormon Church, Steve and Kim Smith believed they had achieved the American dream. But after nine years of marriage, shattering revelations of betrayal came—enough to test the strongest bonds of faith and love. When Steve confesses to infidelities with men, and they both find they are HIV+, Kim makes an unlikely choice. The Smith Family is a searing account of one family’s struggle to preserve family and faith, while redefining forgiveness in the face of daunting tragedy.
Daddy & Papa
Daddy & Papa, Johnny Symons' landmark film on gay fathers, received a national Emmy nomination.
Let’s Get Real
Debra Chasnoff’s and Helen S. Cohen's "Let's Get Real," which profiles middle and junior high school students' experiences with name-calling and bullying, has won the Columbine Award for Best Short Documentary at the Moondance International Film Festival.
The Amasong Chorus: Singing Out
Jay Rosenstein's new film, The Amasong Chorus: Singing Out, aired nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens in June. The film also screened at the Michigan Women's Music Festival in August.
The Collector of Bedford Street
The Collector of Bedford Street has a new study guide and was screened at the Council Leadership Conference on Social Capital in Atlantic City, NJ, October 19.
Downside UP
Nancy Kelly's "Downside UP" was shown at the Arkansas Art Council Conference in Hot Springs, Arkansas on October 19.
Home Economics
Jenny Cool's Home Economics is being featured this Fall in the course City Cine: Visuality, Media and Urban Experience at U.S.C.'s School of Architecture. An ethnographic look at the explosion of bedroom communities in the 1990s, the film is also the subject of an article reprinted this year in Bedford St. Martin's critical sourcebook "Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World".
In Whose Honor
In Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports screened as part of the Reeltime Film and Video series at Northwestern University in June.
Letters Not About Love
Letters Not About Love will be screening on December 3rd at the Pioneer Theatre in New York City to mark the “end of the Soviet Union era.”
Los Trabajadores/The Workers
Heather Courtney's award-winning film Los Trabajadores/ The Workers will be broadcast on the Austin PBS station, KLRU, as part of a new series "Best of South by Southwest" which highlights some of the favorite films from the festival the past few years.
Shakti Butler, Ph.D., director of The Way Home and Light in the Shadows is currently in production on Making Whiteness Visible, a new video profiling white, anti-racism activists and exploring their work.
What Do You Believe?
What Do You Believe?, about the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers,
is now closed captioned on its new DVD edition. The film will be screening at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting on November 20th in San Antonio, Texas.
Women of Mystery
The Masterpiece Theater Book and Film Club Guide for Libraries, mailed to 18,500 public librarians this summer, highlighted the Women of Mystery Screening-Reading-Discussion program.
Three New Day filmmakers have just received PBS funding for new films. Laurel Chiten, director of Twist and Shout, received funding for Twisted, a film about people with the neurological disorder dystonia. Tod Shepard, director of Scout’s Honor, has ben funded for Knocking, a film about Jehovah’s Witnesses as unsung civil rights heroes and Heather Courtney, director of Los Trabajadores/The Workers, has received funding for Letters from the Other Side, a documentary about the “other side “of the day laborers story -- the women and children emigrants leave behind..
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ALL OF OUR FILMS, VISIT http://www.newday.com
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