Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yawker, the women behind the powerful video documentary, Training Rules, about homophobia in women’s collegiate sports, have found a new focus.
The activist filmmakers have launched a new web campaign to support their new video project, "The Last Closet."
For help with the project, they are currently searching for a young, gay athlete (in junior high, middle school or other lower grade high school) who has dreams of becoming a pro athlete.
The young man they are looking for would be currently "out" to his family, his friends and his team.
The activist filmmakers released the following statement, recently asking Pat Griffin to post it on her LGBT Sport blog:
There has never been, in all of US sports history, a gay athlete in any of the top five professional sports, who has come out publicly while they are still actively playing. Our film and web campaign is a quest to find out why this is so and a vehicle to pave the way for this historic event to unfold.
Our young athlete would act as co-interviewer on some of our strategic shoots, including the commissioners of all five sports. We have already secured interviews with some well known players and others in the sports world.
They request that anyone who fits the description above contact them via email at their earliest convenience, at TheLastCloset@gmail.com.
In 1993, the producer-director team founded "Woman Vision," a nonprofit organization that's mission "is to promote social justice through the production of educational films and video." They have since produced ten award-winning documentaries to date.
In 1994 they produced the Academy Award nominated short film, "Straight from the Heart," which explores the journey that parents experience as they try to understand their LGBT children.
Their 2008 film, Training Rules, uncovered decades of abuse and discrimination throughout women's collegiate sports. The film specifically profiled Rene Portland, the ("No lesbians") women's basketball coach at Penn State University -- a school that is once again embroiled in a sexual scandal surrounding their sports programs and has resulted in a media frenzy.
More about Women Vision, the filmmakers and their films can be found on their website.