Dee Mosbacher

Dee Mosbacher

Diane "Dee" Mosbacher, MD, Ph.D., (born January 13, 1949 in Houston, Texas) is an American filmmaker, lesbian feminist activist, and practicing psychiatrist. In 1993, Mosbacher founded Woman Vision, a nonprofit organization to promote equal treatment of all people through the production and use of educational media, including video.[1]

To date, Mosbacher has directed or produced nine documentary films through Woman Vision, each having to do with LGBTQ or Women’s Rights issues. In 1994, Mosbacher directed and produced Straight From the Heart, which was nominated for an Academy Award.[2] Altogether, Mosbacher’s films have received a total of 46 awards—by LGBT, Black, Latina, Latin American, and Aging Media film festivals, including best of show award, grand jury awards, and audience awards, in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Cuba, Mexico, and Italy.[1]

In 2012, Woman Vision launched The Last Closet—a web-based campaign and video project to end homophobia in men's professional sports.[3]

Oscar nomination for Straight from the Heart

In 1995, Mosbacher co-directed and co-produced with Frances Reid Straight From the Heart, a documentary that explored relationships between straight parents and their gay children. The film includes emotional interviews with a straight couple that didn't approve of homosexuality until they learned that their son, who was dying of AIDS, was gay. The film was nominated for an Academy Award.[4]

Training Rules

Main article: Training Rules

In 2010, Mosbacher co-directed and co-produced with Fawn Yacker the documentary film Training Rules, an hour-long movie about Rene Portland, a woman's basketball coach from Penn State University. Portland allegedly banned lesbians from playing on her team. The film contains interviews with former athletes and faculty members at Penn State who say that Portland actively pursued and harassed members of her team whom she suspected to be gay.

Training Rules was shown in dozens of film festivals in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and won three audience choice awards.[5]

Affiliations

Mosbacher served on the Pitzer College Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2002. In 2011, Mosbacher established the Mosbacher Fund for Media Studies and the Mosbacher/Gartrell Center for Media Experimentation and Activism at Pitzer College.[6][7]

Personal life

Mosbacher is the daughter of the late Robert Mosbacher (1927 – 2010), who served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1992. Mosbacher and her father had a close relationship despite the Republican Party's largely anti-gay position. In 1992, on a day when the two were both giving commencement speeches, she told a Washington Post reporter that she began her speech: "Dad and I had breakfast this morning. We looked at each other's speeches. He would have used mine but he's not a lesbian. I would have used his, but I'm not a Republican."[8] Dr. Mosbacher spoke out against the gay-bashing and anti-woman focus of the Republican Party’s 1992 campaign.[9][10]

Mosbacher is married to Nanette Gartrell, MD,[11] a researcher, psychiatrist, and author of the 2008 book My Answer Is NO. . . . If That's Okay With You[12]

Filmography

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 3 Woman Vision Productions official website
  2. ↑ IMDB page for Straight from the Heart
  3. ↑ The Last Closet page on the Woman Vision website
  4. ↑ New York Times Cast and Crew and Awards for Straight from the Heart
  5. ↑ Training Rules official website
  6. ↑ Pitzer Press Release, "Documentary Filmmaker and Alumna Donates $1.5 Million to Pitzer College"
  7. ↑ "The Participant, Fall 2013 Magazine from Pitzer College (see last page)"
  8. ↑ THE LESBIAN IN THE G.O.P. FAMILY, by Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer, 1992
  9. ↑ San Francisco Chronicle, “A Word on Lesbian in GOP Family,” by Liz Smith. September 7, 1992, page E1.
  10. ↑ The New Yorker, “Malice Toward Some,” Comment. October 26, 1992, pages 4-6.
  11. ↑ Dee Mosbacher, Nanette Gartrell in The New York Times, Fashion and Style, January 16, 2005
  12. ↑ My Answer Is NO. . . . If That's Okay With You official website
  13. ↑ Lamba Legal Press Release, October 15, 1997
  14. ↑ IMDB Awards page for Radical Harmonies
  15. ↑ Equality Forum & QFest present first Barbara Gittings Award to filmmaker Dee Mosbacher, Miami Herald, July 2009
  16. ↑ 2014 Awards Luncheon for the Mathew O. Tobriner Public Service Award from the Legal Aid Society, Employment Law Center

External links

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