DECLARATIONS: ESSAYS ON AMERICAN IDEALS

Program Two: ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL?

Biographical Information

Nobody Gave Us the Streets

Essayist Robert L. Woodson, Sr., free market advocate and founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, is a long-time critic of what he terms as the establishment civil rights movement.

Producer Michel Negroponte's film, Silver Valley, won the Grand Prize for Best Film at the Cinema du Reel in France in 1984. His first film was the award-winning feature length documentary, Space Coast. A documentarian and teacher at New York University; his other credits include the New England Film Festival winner Resident Exile, a documentary for the PBS series Non-Fiction Television (1981). His work has appeared on PBS, NBC's "Saturday Night Live," and European television.


Riding In Cars With Girls

Essayist Beverly Donofrio grew up in a working class Italian-American family during the 1960s. Her irreverent autobiography, Riding in Cars with Boys (William Morrow 1990, Penguin Paperback 1992), chronicles her life as a teenage mother, welfare recipient and recreational drug user living under the gaze of her mother and policeman father. She is co-author with Rosalie Bonanno of Mafia Marriage, My Story (William Morrow 1990); her articles have appeared in the Village Voice, Magazine, Cosmopolitan and other periodicals. She also is a freelance commentator and reporter for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and author of one television episode of Phenom, a situation comedy on ABC.

Producer Julie Gustafson is noted for her pioneering documentary style, in films that focus on women and the American condition, from motherhood in Giving Birth: Four Portraits, to activism in Casting the First Stone, to a reflection on ideals in The Pursuit of Happiness. Her work has appeared widely on PBS and at festivals around the world, including the Berlin Film Festival, the Toronto Festival of Festivals, and PRIX Italia.


The Fable of Equality's Child

Essayist Derrick Bell, is a legal scholar and author (Faces at the Bottom of the Well) who has written for numerous legal, scholarly, and popular periodicals and whose forfeiture of his tenured position at Harvard Law School (when it failed to tenure an African American woman) ignited national debate.

Producer Lourdes Portillo earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Feature Documentary, a jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and an Emmy, along with some 20 other prizes, for her acclaimed documentary, Las Madres: Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The film was shown theatrically and on public television (P.O.V.). Her last film, Columbus on Trial, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1993.


The Ballad of Demetrio Rodriguez

Essayist Demetrio Rodriguez is the son of a migrant worker and fourth-generation Texan. He came to San Antonio at the age of six, because his father thought his children would get a better education in its unsegregated schools.

*Producer Renee Tajima is a documentary producer and writer. Her documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin, earned an Academy Award nomination and was broadcast on P.O.V. Other credits include The Best Hotel on Skid Row, Yellow Tale Blues, What Americans Really Think of the Japanese, and Fortune Cookies: The Search for Asian America. Her work has been broadcast on PBS, ABC, Home Box Office, Lifetime Television, and Japanese and European television.



Program Two: ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL?
  • About
  • Fact Sheet

    DECLARATIONS: ESSAYS ON AMERICAN IDEALS

  • Index


    ITVS