Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker
The Oscars® Winners & Nominees • 1h 16m
Directed by Richard Schmiechen • Documentary • With Patrick Stewart • 1991 • 75 minutes
Academy Award-winning director Richard Schmiechen (The Times of Harvey Milk) vividly portrays the life and work of a woman who changed both the medical community and society in Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker.
During the repressive 1950s, Dr. Evelyn Hooker undertook groundbreaking research that led to a radical discovery: homosexuals were not, by definition, “sick.“ Dr. Hooker’s finding sent shock waves through the psychiatric community and culminated in a major victory for gay rights. In 1974 the weight of her studies, along with gay activism, forced the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its official manual of mental disorders. Startling archival footage of the medical procedure used to “cure” homosexuality, images from the underground gay world of the McCarthy era, and home movies of literary icon Christopher Isherwood bring to life history that we must never forget. Dr. Hooker’s insights into marriage equality and the gay community (a term she coined) and the filmmakers’ winning approach make this documentary education at its most exciting and enjoyable.
This Academy Award-nominated film is narrated by Patrick Stewart.
Up Next in The Oscars® Winners & Nominees
-
The Decline of the American Empire
Directed by Denys Arcand • Drama • With Dominique Michel, Dorothée Berryman, Louise Portal • 1986 • 101 minutes
When a Montreal professor (Rémy Girard) and his wife (Dorothée Berryman) gather six of their erudite friends for a holiday in the country, the conversation naturally turns to sex. The ...
-
A Man Called Ove
Directed by Hannes Holm • Drama • With Rolf Lassgard, Bahar Pars, Ida Engvoll • 2015 • 116 minutes
Stepping from the pages of Fredrik Backman’s international best-selling novel, Ove is the quintessential angry old man next door. An isolated retiree with strict principles and a short fuse, who sp...
-
On the Bowery
Directed by Lionel Rogosin • Documentary • With Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews • 1956 • 65 minutes
On the Bowery chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded on t...
