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C u r r e n t P r o j e c t s
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Two Spirits Two Spirits received a standing ovation at its world premiere in November at the Starz Denver Film Festival. At the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Two Spirits has been nominated for the Fund of Santa Barbara Social Justice Award for Documentary Film. Two Spirits and the Fred Martinez Project have received the Monette-Horwitz Distinguished Achievement Award for outstanding activism, research, and scholarship to combat homophobia. And the U.S. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in Washington has joined more than fifty national organizations as an outreach partner. Fred Martinez was nadleeh—someone
who possesses the gift of both masculine and feminine traits according to his
traditional Navajo culture. On a warm summer evening in Cortez, Colorado, Fred
hugged his mother, said he would return soon, and left the trailer house in
which they lived to attend a rodeo carnival. Fred was sixteen years-old. He
dressed as he usually did with a touch of mascara, wearing a small bra stuffed
with socks beneath his sweatshirt, and carrying his favorite purse. He spent
several hours with friends and then disappeared. His savagely beaten body was
found five days later in a shallow canyon near his home. The film also explores the history of Native two-spirited
people and the range of gender expression and sexual identity that
has long been seen as a healthy part of many of the indigenous
cultures of North America, and of Navajo culture in particular,
which recognizes four genders. The first is the feminine
woman. The second is the masculine man. The third is the male-bodied
person who has a feminine essence—nadleeh. The fourth
is the female-bodied person who has a masculine essence—dilbaa.
When a child is born, elders seek to support the child in becoming
fully who they are, and, in adolescence, the ceremony that marks
entry into life as an adult is different for each gender. Quite
wonderfully, a nadleeh or dilbaa person receives
a combination of the masculine and feminine ceremonies. In Navajo, nadleeh means “one who
is transformed," and as the film traces the ramifications
of a murder in the lives of those most affected, we see the possibility
to transform bigotry into a respect for the balance of the masculine
and feminine as a way of maintaining sacred order. When people
are seen as being healthy and whole in any part of the gender and
sexuality spectrum, perhaps we can return to the most traditional
American values. . 
Rise Rise is a show about a doctor in a small Arizona town who discovers that the experimental allergy drug she prescribes is a kind of legal ecstasy. The drug suddenly scrambles her patients’ lives—some for the better and others for the worse. It transforms their outlooks, libidos, and their relationships. And the doctor’s life and her family are turned upside down as well. The ensemble cast of white and Latino characters struggles with the fine line between living a larger life and utterly screwing it up, as each of them questions just what they are willing to risk in order to try to feel and be better.
Concerto
Out of Silence Out of Silence is the true story of a boy trapped in
his inability to communicate, struggling with autism to regain language.
It is a drama that recounts a family's determination to help a son find
his way back to words; a school's willingness to make room for a severely
disabled child; a story too, about seemingly insurmountable problems and
small but noble victories. |
