Saturday, July 18 • 4:45 • The Prince
Presented with the screening of Training Rules

When her clients share their life stories with Dr. Diane (Dee) Mosbacher MD, PhD, the accounts are kept confidential forever. With other people, she turns their tales into feature-length movies. Such is the paradox of being a San Francisco-based psychiatrist who’s gained international recognition as an Academy Award-nominated director and producer.

Motivated by the gay-bashing and anti-woman atmosphere of the 1992 Republican National Convention, Mosbacher founded Woman Vision in 1993 to counteract the Right’s extremely well-funded and very misleading anti-gay media campaigns. Over the last fi fteen years, Woman Vision, has strived to “promote the values of understanding and diversity, and provide positive role models and supportive images of societally marginalized people” tackling a wide range of subject matter with a common thread of LGBT gender equality and social justice.

In Training Rules (2009) and Out for a Change: Addressing Homophobia in Women’s Sports (1994) Mosbacher exposes the devastating emotional impact that homophobia has on all women athletes, regardless of their sexual orientation. Turning her spotlight on the history of women’s music in Radical Harmonies (2002), Mosbacher worked alongside her long-time friend, Director Joan E. Biren to produce No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon (2002) an astonishing documentary that spans 50 years, chronicling the love and political struggles of the two women who are recognized as founders of the modern lesbian civil rights movement. Her short films, De-Colores (2001) and All God’s Children (1996) address sexual orientation within the context of multi-faith communities of color, and in her Academy Award-nominated short film. In Straight From the Heart (1994) parents grapple with a new understanding of their lesbian and gay children. And speaking of parents, it’s a little-known fact that Mosbacher is the daughter of a prominent Republican — Robert Adam Mosbacher Sr., who is Chairman of Mosbacher Energy Company in Houston and who served as U.S. secretary of commerce under President Bush from 1989 to 1992. Though there is no acrimony between father and daughter, funnily enough, both Mosbacher and her spouse of 34 years, Dr. Nanette Gartrell (they tied the knot twice at San Francisco’s City Hall — in 2004 and then again in 2008) collect little elephants (although not Republican ones). --Carol Coombes

Barbara Gittings Award
The Fourth of July, 1966 was a glorious, sunny day in Philadelphia. And it was a day filled with tremendous hope - and fear - as a handful of gay men and women lifted their picket signs in peaceful protest in front of Independence Hall. These individuals did not seek glory; they marched for the belief that "HOMOSEXUALS should be judged as individuals," as one sign read. And on that historic afternoon, brave activists quietly demonstrated with the dream that someday you and I would be able to live our lives openly and proudly. That day, the lovely Kay Tobin Lahusen captured one of the most recognizable photos of the entire gay rights movement - at its center, one of the most magnetic and admirable individuals, Kay’s life partner Barbara Gittings.

With a radiant wide smile on her face and tireless determination in her soul, this visual leader of the LGBT community has been - and continues to be - a true inspiration to people everywhere. Fortunately for us Philadelphians, Barbara called our city home. Beginning her assiduous efforts in 1958, she established the East Coast chapter of the first official lesbian organization, The Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), which she subsequently parlayed into becoming the editor of the first lesbian journal, The Ladder. With this new politically conscious platform, Gittings also helped organize the first gay rights marches in Philadelphia from 1965-1969. In the ’70s, she successfully helped petition the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality as a mental disorder and lobbied the American Library Association to include gay and lesbian literature in public libraries. After a long life full of love and passion, Barbara left us on February 18th, 2007. We’ve highlighted just a few of her achievements here, but her real legacy is that her ardent passion for gay and lesbian activism carries on, inspiring many LGBT activists of a different generation to grab their proverbial picket signs and fight for our equality.

The Philadelphia Cinema Alliance, in conjunction with Equality Forum, created the Barbara Gittings Award to honor her life’s work through the arts, to be presented to an out member of the entertainment, arts, sports, politics or media industry. Barbara and Kay were ardent film lovers and were dedicated supporters of Philadelphia QFest, so it is only fitting that our inaugural award recipient is documentary filmmaker Dee Mosbacher, who, like Barbara, is a unwavering advocate and activist for LGBT social justice.

The award will be presented to Dee Mosbacher at the screening of Training Rules, her latest documentary that continues the fight that Barbara started.
-- Kelly Burkhardt & Carol Coombes