There will be several events during the conference that will focus on adoption in film.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

10:30-12:15  Plenary: Adoption in Documentary Film (Bartos Theatre)

                     Chair: Emily Mann, Northeastern University

                     Screening: Moms Living Clean, with discussion.

                     Sheila Ganz, writer, filmmaker, San Francisco

Countering punitive laws and social stigma against mothers who use drugs, the documentary MOMS LIVING CLEAN chronicles the struggles and triumphs of six single mothers in an innovative residential treatment program over three years, following their transition into the community where they face challenging moments of temptation.  As their story unfolds, the film takes an unflinching look at the disastrous effects of the war on drugs through laws and policies aimed at pregnant and parenting women with addictions, and the legacy of imprisonment and foster care on children.  The film will be screened in rough-cut form and released in spring 2011.

1-2:45  Plenary: Adoption in Documentary Film II (Bartos Theatre)

                     Chair: Margaret Rhodes, U. Mass-Boston

                     Screening: For the Life of Me, with discussion.

                     Jean Strauss, filmmaker and author, Lubbock, Texas

Many Americans remain unaware that most adopted citizens are never allowed access to their own original records - ever. The recently released feature documentary, For the Life of Me, illuminates the impact of this imposed lifetime of secrecy upon people entering the last decades of their lives. Witnessing Dave (age 52) and Joe (age 67) as they unearth their own origins brings the absurdity and inhumanity of antiquated policies of closed adoption into sharp relief. The film’s insights, and surprising and heartwarming conclusion, are a powerful addition to the ongoing dialogue regarding adoption policy, both retrospectively, and prospectively.

3:00-4:00      Screening and installation: Translating Hiraeth (45 min), with discussion.

                     Chair: Beth Coleman, MIT             

                     Judy Durey, installation artist, Murdoch University, Western Australia

Translating Hiraeth is a four screen, multi-vocal, Installation. Using performative text, archival imagery, video, and sound, I explore some of the emotional complexities when opening a ‘closed’ cross cultural, adoption’. The work is autobiographical but reaches beyond the personal in an attempt to raise questions about silence and belonging, family, and identity, language, culture and place. Employing an archaeological sensibility to excavate silence, Translating Hiraeth uses contemporary letters, perceptions and past reflections to expose the emotional, ethical and cultural tensions held within the past/present. I attempt to express a necessity for story and the ‘performative’ challenge of incorporating new ‘particular’ information about identity, into a felt sense of self. This ambiguous process also draws on other narrative positions to (re)negotiate a relational ‘text’.

4:15-5:30      Screening: A Man Without Culture Is Like a Zebra Without Stripes. (Bartos Theatre)

                     Chair: Joyce Maguire Pavao, Center for Family Connections

                     Ann Somers, Preparation Center for International Adoption, Belgium

This film, made in 2002, is part of a trilogy about openness, grief, and living with differences in adoption.  For “Man without culture” we interviewed birth mothers in South Africa and followed the process of handing over a child from the birth mother to the adoptive parents. It lasts an hour and the part on the birth mothers and the handing over each take 20 minutes. The films were made by the Preparation Centre for International Adoption (Ghent, Belgium) in cooperation with the University of Ghent and the International Adoption Centre in London. It has subtitles in English and is often shown at adoption meetings in the UK.

[This description, provided by the presenter to ASAC, suggests something very different from the treatment of birthmothers shown in this film. Rather than promoting openness, the agency controls birthmothers’  communications with the adoptive family, and cuts them off after two years. In the film, a social worker  claims that two years is enough time for birthmothers to grieve.  Professionals and birthparents know that this is often not true, and some found her comment appalling and  said so in the discussion period. Focusing on South Africa, and showing the transfer of poor black children to prosperous white families, the film painfully (and ironically) recalls the treatment of black mothers under apartheid.  The film's website claims that it gives an idea of good practice in post-adoption counseling according to the Hague convention, but the accompanying film showing adoptive parents with their children demonstrates that this agency's post-adoption counseling does not provide the anti-racist perspective that adoptive parents and children in transracial adoption will need, and thus does not follow the Hague Convention's requirements of respecting the child's ethnicity and general best interests. These films received much criticism at the conference. We do not endorse their viewpoint or the practices they show. They gave us a painful education about the limitations in how the Hague Convention has often been interpreted, and serious problems in some intercountry adoption practice.]

7:30-9:30      Keynote (Bartos Theatre)

                     Screening: A Girl Like Her, with discussion following.

                     Ann Fessler, installation artist, filmmaker, adoptee, Rhode Island School of Design.

The film explores the gap between the private experiences and public images of single women who became pregnant in the three decades leading up to the feminist movement in the early 1970s. Between 1945 and 1973 an unprecedented 1.5 million women surrendered babies for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure. This film is a heartbreaking collision of the authoritative "educational" films and scripted "newsreels" of the time that reinforced shame and perpetuated the notion that babies born outside of marriage were unwanted, and the voice-over testimony of the mothers who lived through the experience. The film is due to be released in fall 2010/spring 2011 and will be screened in rough-cut form.

Saturday May 1, 2010

10:45-12:15  One of three concurrent sessions will be on adoption in film.

                     A. Adoption in Film  (32-141)

                     Chair: Penny Partridge, Amherst, MA

                     “The Horror of Adoption: The Mother, the Other and the Other Mother in The Ring, The

                     Ring 2, Silent Hill, The Abandoned and The Orphan.”

                     Kim Park Nelson, Minnesota State University at Moorhead

                     “Adoption and the Movies: One Adopted Person’s Perspective.”

                     Joyce Maguire Pavao, Center For Family Connections, Cambridge, MA

7:30-9:30      Keynote (32-d123)

                     Screening: In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee

                     Deann Borshay Liem, producer, director, writer. 

                     Executive Director of Katahdin Productions, based in Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA.

In the 1960s just before being adopted from a Korean orphanage by an American family, the filmmaker’s identity was switched with another girl named Cha Jung Hee. She was told to keep the switch a secret, then sent to America. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee is a personal essay that chronicles her journey to find her double, while exploring the ethical and social dimensions of international transracial adoption. The film is a poignant reflection on memory, identity and what it means to walk in someone else's shoes.