Directed by Ellen Brodsky • Documentary • With Professor Teresa Van Hoy, Priscilla Reyes, Eric Villalpando • 2019 • 33 minutes
Twenty-five history students from St. Mary’s University take a 2,000 mile bus trip from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas to Springfield, Illinois to build a Day of the Dead altar honoring Abraham Lincoln’s support of Mexico, and then to ask the Illinois State Military Museum to return General Antonio López de Santa Anna’s prosthetic leg to Mexico. With humor, humility, and a few animated history lessons, these students, mostly Mexican American, raise questions of identity, national borders, museum ethics, and collective memory. You will even learn a bit about the war Mexicans never forget and Americans hardly remember: the US-Mexican War, known to Americans as the Mexican American War and to Mexicans as the War of the United States against Mexico.
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Becoming Johanna (The Youth and Gende...
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik • Documentary • 2016 • 27 minutes
When Johanna, a 16-year-old transgender Latina, begins her transition and gets kicked out of her home and school, she finds a foster family who loves her and a supportive school principal who helps her graduate and thrive.
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I'm Just Anneke (The Youth and Gender...
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik • Documentary • 2010 • 11 minutes
Anneke is 12. She loves ice hockey and is a hardcore tomboy. Everybody who meets her assumes she's a boy, but she's not sure if she wants to be a girl, a boy, or something in-between when she grows up.
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Spit It Out
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik • Documentary • 2005 • 57 minutes
Spit It Out is a funny and poignant portrait of Jeff Shames' successful efforts to come to terms with his stutter and his family's legacy of denial.
