peterson@vaxwrk.DEC (Bob Peterson) (02/12/86)
Thanks for the info, I'll record that one. Another film which was shown and gone without any fanfare on WGBH a few weeks ago was "Summer's End". It was a half hour dramatic film. It's set in the 1950s in a small southern town at the end of a summer just before school begins. In it, a girl of 9 is faced with her mom's insistence she get her pigtails cut and hair styled into curls "so she'll fit in at school". She is very much into baseball, crawdads, practical jokes, clubhouses, comic book heroes, and in short everything which makes her an individual. This "behavior" makes her mother very unhappy. At one point her anxious mom expresses fear she'll become like her aunt so-and-so (and we know what she meant by *that*). Her very supportive dad really doesn't care. He takes the stand that as long as she's an individual and not hurting anyone she can be whomever she wants. He has to struggle between co-parenting with his wife and doing what he believes is right. The film would make an *excellent* conversation starter both for grade school children. I also believe it should be recorded and shown in lesbian and gay discussion groups. It was distributed by AETN, Arkansas Educational TV Network WGBH does not plan to air it again. I called and they said Beth Brickell produced it under an American Film Institute Fellowship. AETN can be contacted at (501)329-3887 (ask to speak with the Programming dept). When I called they could not legally rent it to loan it to private individuals. Perhaps the teachers in the readership would have more power to obtain it for school. \bob peterson