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Donna Deitch Wins Highest Honor from Outfest

On July 9, at the opening night gala for Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, out director Donna Deitch received the 12th Annual Outfest Achievement Award, given in recognition of a body of work that significantly contributes to LGBT film. An annual award since 1997, Deitch is only the third woman to receive this honor. Christine Vachon and Jane Anderson were recognized in 2001 and 2003 respectively.

In 2007, Outfest named Deitch’s groundbreaking 1985 film Desert Hearts as one of 25 Films That Changed Our Lives. In addition to that lesbian classic, Deitch directed The Women of Brewster Place, a miniseries featuring a black lesbian couple that was produced by Oprah Winfrey, and Common Ground, a Showtime movie that explores the lives of lesbian and gay citizens in a small Connecticut town over several decades. Deitch also has a prolific career as a television director, and has directed shows ranging from NYPD Blue and Crossing Jordan to Heroes.

These days, Deitch is turning her attention back to her own work and her independent filmmaker roots. She is working on the screenplay for the first of several Desert Hearts sequels; looking for financing for a screenplay she wrote set in World War II-era Berlin; and preparing to direct the film version of true crime memoir Strange Piece of Paradise, written by her partner, Terri Jentz.

Deitch recently spoke with AfterEllen.com about her Outfest award, juggling multiple projects, and her trip last month to Africa with feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

Donna Deitch at Outfest

AfterEllen.com: Congratulations on your Outfest Achievement Award. How does this recognition feel? Donna Deitch: I feel very honored to be getting this award, and that’s because I have suchhigh regard for Outfest and what they do. It really means a lot to me to receive an award from an organization that is doing things like the Legacy Project [in which LGBT films are restored] – that no one else has ever thought to do or seems to be taking care of. It’s so important that these films are saved and archived and restored. That’s in addition to the film festival and all the other programs they run throughout the year.

I feel like I’m in some pretty good company with regards to those who have preceded me. Not enough women, just Christine Vachon and Jane Anderson. We’re always looking for women to be recognized for what we do. But the award – it’s awfully good company, and it’s fantastic.

AE: Desert Hearts is much adored, of course, but I’m also glad to see you receiving recognition for Common Ground. It was very well done, and it didn’t get the attention it deserved.

DD: Showtime is subscription television, so unless you subscribe you wouldn’t get a chance to see it. And then those shows go on to the video store, but their profile is lower than a theatrical release.

Joanne Vannicola (left) and Brittany Murphy in Common Ground

AE: It’s so rare to find significant men’s and women’s queer content in the same film, which is one of the things I appreciated about Common Ground. DD: The writers were spectacular – Paula Vogel, Terrence McNally, and Harvey Fierstein. So that was quite a group to begin with.I saw it as a gay and lesbian Our Town. It was so much more evenly divided than typical fare.

AE: Last year when you spoke with us, you mentioned that a sequel to Desert Hearts is in the works. What can you tell us about it? DD:I’m still working on the screenplay. That would put me into pre-pre-production. I’ve just recently turned my mind to that in a rather committed way as opposed to it being on the back burner. I hope to have the screenplay done by the fall. That’s what I’m determined to do now.

And I’m going to be directing a film of my partner’s book called Strange Piece of Paradise – Terri Jentz’s book, she’s writing the screenplay for that right now. It’s a true crime memoir. I think she’ll have that done by the end of the summer.

Author Terri Jentz

AE: Since it’s a true story, will the film be a documentary or a feature? DD: It’s a feature. She was riding her bicycle across country with her roommate from college, and they were attacked by an axe murderer in 1977. And she went back years later to solve the crime. The crime was never solved.

The solving of the crime and the event itself drive the narrative. It’s a lot about violence against women. It’s also a story of a small town and how they kept the truth of his attack to themselves.

AE: With two of you in the family working on projects at the same time, how is that going to be with balancing which one to do first, etc.? DD:The one to do first will be the one that’s done first, and the one that gets the financing first.

I also have another screenplay that I’ve written that I’m trying to get the financing for. It’s a World War II story about the most infamous “catcher” in Berlin. Catchers were Jews who hid underground but were caught and told, “If you catch Jews and turn them over to us, we will keep you off the trains.” At the beginning of the war there were 15,000 Jews in Berlin, and at the end of the war there were 1,500, and that’s due partly to these catchers.

It’s pretty controversial because the character is a coward and made a choice that is worth examining. It takes a look at how people are broken down, and with the Nazis in how they broke the Jews in preparation for their Final Solution. And this particular woman was an incredibly beautiful blonde and talented singer. This was neither a hero nor a typical villain. She was more of an average person.

AE: Because we’re AfterEllen.com, I have to ask: Is there any queer content in it? DD:Yes, there is. I took all these characters mentioned in the book … and constructed a coterie of characters around Stella. These were people who intersected with her in childhood, through enforced labor and underground. This provides part of the page-turner aspect of this screenplay, because you never know if she’s going to catch this person with whom she had a friendship with, whether she was going to turn them in or not. And one of them becomes a lesbian with another young woman who already is a lesbian. They meet and go underground together.

AE: Is there a working title? DD: It’s called Blonde Ghost – she was known as the Blonde Ghost.

It’s a thriller and it’s a love story. I’m obsessed with telling the story, but I just need to get the financing.I’ll get it – I know I’ll get it.

AE: Do you still have connections with Oprah Winfrey? Maybe she could help. DD:That’s very interesting that you thought of that, because Oprah tried to option this book herself. When I read the book, I wanted to get it. So I just called the author Peter Wyden and introduced myself, and one of the first things he said to me was that Oprah Winfrey is interested in optioning this book. And I said, “Well, Oprah gave me my first job as a director, and she’s such a fantastic person, and remains to this day the best boss I ever had, but Oprah owns a lot of books. And if you option this book to me, this would be the only book that I have.”

He and I would talk every couple of weeks as I was in the process of talking him into going with me instead of Oprah. And one day he called me and said, “I’m going to option the book with you … I was talking to someone at Oprah’s company about you and they said some awfully nice things about you, so that made up my mind.”

Oprah Winfrey and Jackée in The Women of Brewster Place

AE: Have you had any discussion with her about this? DD:No, I haven’t, but I’m going to take my screenplay to her. She’s at this place now where she’s branched out, having made The Great Debaters with Denzel Washington. She was pretty much strictly into producing television films before and this is not a television film.

AE: I imagine it won’t be difficult to get the financing for the Desert Hearts sequel. DD: Desert Heartswon’t be difficult; that’s going to come fairly readily.

AE: What can you tell us about the sequel? DD: It’s not meant to be a conventional sequel in the sense that it specifically follows the two main characters, although they are in it. It begins to collect other characters.

It’s going to be set in the late ’60s, early ’70s in New York City. There’s a bit of the passing of the baton, so to speak. The two main characters are definitely in it, but it begins to tell other people’s stories as well.

I call it the world of Desert Hearts. I’m being a little bit vague on purpose. I see a number of future possibilities for the world of Desert Hearts, so this would be the first of several.

AE: Tell us about your recent trip to Africa. DD: I was in Zambia with Gloria Steinem and Equality Now at a conference about female sexual trafficking. It was one of the most illuminating and intense trips of my life.

Equality Now is an organization that I’m very involved with, and they are intent on changing the laws on behalf of women’s rights all over the world – could be divorce laws, female genital mutilation, sexual trafficking – but they believe if you change a law, you can then enforce the law. Female sexual trafficking and sexual trafficking of children is so enormous in our world – and in America, in case people don’t think it happens here.

This conference was in Moussaka [in Zambia], and there were women from all over talking about the organizing they’re doing in their countries, and how things are getting better or worse. I did shoot a lot [of footage]. I’m going to be cutting what I have and putting it up on the Equality Now website, so people can find out what’s going on.

We went on a little safari when the conference was over on the lower Zambezi, and we were able to go into the bush and meet these local women who were living there and talk to them about their own experiences with violence and prostitution and trafficking.

Last year I had gone to Nairobi with Equality Now to a female genital mutilation conference, which was like a gateway to Africa for me – all the women I met there from all these different countries who were so learned and passionate … I have fallen in love with Africa. I want to go every year and see a different country.

But one of the differences in this trip, since Gloria was along, it gave an opportunity to have a cultural focal point on the film that I’m cutting because we have a very recognizable, incredibly brilliant woman along on the trip. It helps focus the film, because we can see her and hear her interacting with these women, so it lets you into the subject through her. We know what she stands for, and we know the work she’s done in her life.

She’s among the most articulate people I’ve ever encountered. Her ability to communicate with so many different kinds of people on so many different levels is just extraordinary. This woman is a brilliant wordsmith. And very loving and compassionate, too.

I believe no woman is free until all women are free, and no woman is equal until all women are equal. This is in part why we work to end the sexual trafficking of women in Africa and everywhere.

AE: Are you doing any directing at the moment? DD: [laughs] I hope not! It’s tough to be on that 14-hour workday and then do anything else. So I’m trying to focus on what it is that I want to do and want to accomplish here.

I spent a lot of time directing other people’s projects, primarily television, and all the while hoping to get back to my own work. But at the same time, feeling gratitude for the work I was doing.

I began work as an independent filmmaker. I never imagined I’d be working in television as a director. I do want to get back to my own work.

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