If You Don't Recognize Her Name You Will Her Gay Films, Debra Chasnoff Dead at 60
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Debra Chasnoff, an Oscar-winning documentarian whose educational films promoted greater tolerance for gays and lesbians, died on Nov. 7 at her home in San Francisco. She was 60.
Her wife, Nancy Otto, said the cause was breast cancer.
Ms. Chasnoff’s first film, which she produced in 1984 with her companion at the time, Kim Klausner, was titled “Choosing Children.” It profiled six households headed by same-sex parents who were raising children through adoption, foster parenting, previous relationships and donor insemination.
The film was said to have inspired many gay and lesbian couples to start raising families of their own.
“I think that very first film has done more to change the world than anything else I could possibly do,” Ms. Chasnoff said in a 2013 interview on blogtalkradio.com. “It’s no longer assumed you can’t be a parent if you’re gay.”
Ms. Chasnoff won the Academy Award for documentary short in 1992 for producing and directing “Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment,” which explored that company’s role in making bombs and its impact on public health.
At the awards ceremony in Hollywood, she praised In fact (now called Corporate Accountability), an advocacy group that had organized a boycott of General Electric products to protest the company’s involvement with nuclear weapons.
In fact credited the film for influencing G.E.’s decision later that year to divest itself of the division that made bomb triggers. A G.E. spokesman said, however, that the sale was made solely for financial reasons as military budgets had shrunk.
Ms. Chasnoff made Oscar history at that ceremony by acknowledging Ms. Klausner as “my life partner.” It was said to be the first time a female recipient had thanked a same-sex partner from the ceremony’s stage.
“When I did it, I thought, this is really astonishing to me that this hasn’t happened before,” she told Lesbian News magazine in 2009. “We all know plenty of gay people who have won Academy Awards, but we’re all just quiet about it. I couldn’t imagine having that profound of an honor and not acknowledging my partner.”
“Deadly Deception” was only Ms. Chasnoff’s second documentary, after “Choosing Children,” which she had also directed. She went on to produce and direct documentaries on other social issues, including middle-school bullying and generating affordable housing.
But she was best known for films like “It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School” (1996) and “That’s a Family” (2000). Shown in classrooms, “That’s a Family” has exposed students to diverse relationships, including households headed by single mothers, multiracial families, and same-sex couples.
Ms. Chasnoff said that each film was intended to be a catalyst for discussion in an age-appropriate curriculum.
“Our approach in making the film is giving young people a chance to know what’s going on in their lives,” she told The New York Times in 2007. “There are some things that all loving families share.”
But “That’s a Family” provoked a backlash from conservative groups and parents who considered the subject matter unfit for younger children.
A New Jersey school district banned the film from its third-grade classrooms. A district in Marin County, Calif., north of San Francisco, gave parents the option of withholding consent for their own fifth-grade children to view it.
Ms. Chasnoff was president of GroundSpark, a nonprofit company whose Respect for All Project distributes films and companion educational guides for classroom discussion. She was an owner of New Day Films, another distributor.
Her other producing and directing credits include “Straightlaced: How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up” (2009), about sexuality conflicts faced by teenagers; “Let’s Get Real” (2003), about name-calling; “One Wedding and a Revolution” (2004), about the legalization of same-sex marriage; and “Celebrating the Life of Del Martin” (2011), about a leading lesbian-rights activist.
Andrea Levere, the president of Prosperity Now, whose programs provide financial stability for poor people and with whom Ms. Chasnoff made two films, said in a telephone interview that Ms. Chasnoff had “combined an artistic sensibility with the ability to tell stories that promote understanding, activism, and justice.”
Debra Hill Chasnoff was born on Oct. 12, 1957, in Philadelphia and was raised in a Maryland suburb of Washington. Her father, Joel, was a lawyer and a Maryland state legislator. Her mother, the former Selina Sue Prosen, was a psychologist.
Ms. Chasnoff earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1978 and worked briefly as a rate analyst, with companies involved in nuclear weaponry among her clients. She and Ms. Klausner moved from Boston to San Francisco in 1985 and had two sons together. They later separated.
In addition to Ms. Otto, Ms. Chasnoff, who was known by friends as Chas, is survived by her father; her sons with Ms. Klausner, Noah and Oscar Klausner, her sister, Lori Langford; and her brother, Jordan Chasnoff.
At her death, Ms. Chasnoff, who learned she had breast cancer in 2015, was working on a documentary that, according to her website, “could help shape how people with cancer, their families, caregivers, healers and medical practitioners approach life-changing diagnoses.”
Ms. Otto and Ms. Chasnoff’s colleagues at GroundSpark hope to complete the film. It is tentatively titled “Prognosis.”
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