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This article also online at http://www.innewsweekly.com/Pages/ArtsStories/sportsconfab.html
BOSTON, MA – When Michael Moore accepted his Oscar Sunday night; he used the opportunity to voice his political views to a crowd that both booed and cheered. On Monday, anyone who had watched the Academy Awards was commenting on Moore’s speech, and whether or not they would have done the same. One viewer, however, says she would have included a political message with her thanks – the difference is, she very nearly did just that, and her film crew members are coming to Boston this spring.
Dr. Dee Mosbacher, a California psychiatrist, was an Academy Award nominee for a short documentary in 1995. The film that took her to the Academy Awards, Straight From the Heart is one of her many award-winning films that directly addresses issues facing gays and lesbians today. As the jacket says, “Straight from the Heart explores parents' journeys to a new understanding of their lesbian and gay children by presenting simple stories about real people.” She said that if she had won an Oscar, she would have made a political statement about homophobia when she gave her thanks.
This month, the beginning of her next video on homophobia in sports, will be filmed at MIT and Boston City Hall, during the National Gay & Lesbian Athletics Conference from March 28-30.
For over ten years Dr. Mosbacher has been producing films that she hopes, “facilitate deep discussions about difficult issues.” She claims, “ I was inspired to do a sort of ‘Homophobia 101’ in the early 90s when the radical right came out with these trashy videos that really distorted the image of homosexuals.”
Straight eventually ended up in the hands of a lot of those “radical right” folks, because of one of Mosbacher’s biggest fans: her father. In most families, having a father brag about and share his daughter’s work with his colleagues isn’t very odd. Of course in most families, the daughter isn’t a gay rights activist, and the father isn’t the chief fundraiser for the Republican Party’s presidential campaign.
Robert Mosbacher, Dee’s father, and longtime friend of George Bush Sr. served as Commerce Secretary from 1989 to 1992. He also served as general chairman of the Republican National Committee. The party lines sometimes made things awkward at family gatherings, but Dr. Mosbacher says that her father has been “pretty supportive” of her film career; he specifically like Straight.
“After he saw [the film], he called and told me that he loved it; he had cried through [the video]. Then he said, ‘Dee, where did you get those wonderful actors?’” Mosbacher recalls. “Of course, I explained that you don’t have actors in a documentary,” she laughs.
These days, she’s turned her focus from parents to athletes and is planning a film on homophobia in sports.
“When I was a kid, a shrimp at 5’ 2”, I played basketball, and was even named All-Conference in my league, and I really learned a lot from sports, “ remembers Mosbacher, “I stopped when I got to college, and I wasn’t conscious of it, but looking back, I realize that part of the reason was that I didn’t want to be labeled a lesbian. As I got older and thought about this, I also realized that this is still going on today.”
Mosbacher’s created her film Out for a Change: Addressing Homophobia in Women’s Sports seven years ago because she felt that “whether lesbian or not, if you are a woman who plays sports, you are branded as a lesbian, and [she] wanted to do something about that.” Out was a Screening Honoree at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
According to her production company’s website, Woman Vision Productions, Out “exposes the devastating emotional impact that homophobia has on all women athletes, regardless of their sexual orientation. This video reveals how the fear of being labeled a lesbian or "dyke" hinders the performance of all female athletes, and even prevents many women from participating in sports at all.”
Now, though, Mosbacher says, “Things have changed, but they haven’t changed.” She’s re-opening this discussion of homophobia in sports due in part, to a sports conference in Boston. “The National Gay & Lesbian Athletics Conference is giving me the chance to explore things that I have always wanted to include in a discussion of homophobia is sports.”
One of these issues she wants to include is gay men who play sports. Mosbacher wants to address “the interesting and distinctive difference between gay men & women’s experiences in sport.”
Mac Chinsomboon, Executive Director of the Gay & Lesbian Athletics Foundation, which is hosting the conference, agrees with many of Dr. Mosbacher’s assumptions about gay male athletes. “People don’t seem to want to believe that gay men plays sports. They get stereotyped as ‘artsy,’ because there’s something about a gay football captain that scares people,” says Chinsomboon. He goes on to say, “In addition, the epithets that are used in boys’ and mens’ sports are about being ‘queer,’ or ‘a girl,’ or a ‘fag.’ There is this intense homophobia in mens’ locker rooms that we are trying to break down.”
Mosbacher’s hope is that through her next video, a sort of “sequel to Out,” she can “facilitate a discussion on homophobia and get people to use the medium of video to do that.” The format for her productions is very particular. Each video is less than 30 minutes long and comes with a study guide.
Mosbacher says that she creates them specifically for classroom and community discussions. She has faith that “to project your fears and emotions onto a video opens you up to have a discussion that sparks the process of change.”
Dr. Mosbacher is “thrilled to have the opportunity to record people at the upcoming sports conference.” She believes that “the key in this next video will be showing the transformation and modeling people who think one way, and then change.”
As for being nominated for an Academy Award, Mosbacher said that she was “beside herself when it happened.” She made her spouse, Nanette, of 28 years to call again because she couldn’t believe her ears. She feels, “incredibly lucky and honored to be a part of that experience.” It’s probably a similar feeling to making the All-Conference basketball team.
If you are interested in attending the National Gay & Lesbian Athletics Conference, check the website for registration as well as information about the hosting organization: the Gay & Lesbian Athletics Foundation at http://www.gayconference.org.
Dr. Mosbacher will also be screening her most recent production, Radical Harmonies at the Museum of Fine Arts during Boston’s LGBT film festival on May2nd.
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RESOURCES
The National Gay & Lesbian Athletics Conference
March 28-30, 2003
http://www.gayconference.org
info@gayconference.org
Women Vision Productions
3570 Clay St.
San Francisco, CA 94118
http://www.woman-vision.org/
info@woman-vision.org
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