Dear Gabe

2003
Directed by: Alexandra Juhasz


“Dear Gabe” is a video- letter created by a lesbian mother to her son. It is a video that reveals the filmmaker's "queer and wonderful family" through an array of images, written excerpts, and interviews of her female friends from college. Each woman has her own family, career, and story on living life as a contemporary feminist, which among other titles, make them all the non- traditional family. While most of the women are lesbians, a couple of them did join in heterosexual marriage, although by no means do they consider themselves traditional. The women all talk about the issues on challenging the gender roles that are established in society. The filmmaker calls herself and her friends a "community of rebels; challenging the status quo." This film shows us how a family may be queer for many more reasons that just the sexuality of the parents, and how women married to men still have to face the issue of gender roles in parenting. The expectations that society has of women and those that women have of themselves are not always in line, but these women chose to follow their own paths. They all struggled through many hardships, the death of a good friend being that which inspires the film. However, they managed to defy and go beyond the roles expected of mothers, whether they're all lesbians or not, but definitely are all queer.



Film website:
http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~ajuhasz/dear_gabe/index.htm

View the full film:
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/dear_gabe/

Review:
http://www.newuniversity.org/2003/11/entertainment/feminist_film_dear_gabe126/

IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1537453/