Dee Mosbacher


Diane "Dee" Mosbacher, MD, Ph.D., is an American filmmaker, lesbian feminist activist, and practicing psychiatrist. In 1993, she founded Woman Vision, a nonprofit organization to promote equal treatment of all people through the production and use of educational media, including video.
As of 2009, Mosbacher has directed or produced nine documentary films through Woman Vision, each having to do with LGBTQ or women's rights issues. In 1994, she directed and produced Straight From the Heart, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Altogether, Mosbacher's films have received a total of 46 awards — by LGBT, Black, Latina, Latin American, and Aging Media film festivals, including best of show award, grand jury awards, and audience awards, in the US, the UK, Australia, Cuba, Mexico, and Italy.
In 2012, Woman Vision launched The Last Closet, a web-based campaign and video project to end homophobia in men's professional sports. The Dee Mosbacher and Woman Vision Papers are archived in the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

Oscar nomination for ''Straight from the Heart''

In 1995, Mosbacher co-directed and co-produced Straight From the Heart, a documentary that explored relationships between heterosexual parents and their adult lesbian and gay children. The film includes emotional interviews with parents who felt conflicted between the teachings of their religious communities and their love of their lesbian daughters and gay sons. One couple discussed their disapproval of homosexuality until they learned that their son, who was dying of AIDS, was gay. The film was nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary category.

''Training Rules''

In 2010, Mosbacher co-directed and co-produced with Fawn Yacker the documentary film Training Rules, an hour-long movie about Rene Portland, a women's basketball coach from Penn State University. Portland allegedly banned lesbians from playing on her team. The film contains interviews with former athletes and faculty members at Penn State who say that Portland actively pursued and harassed members of her team whom she suspected were gay.
Training Rules was shown at dozens of film festivals in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and won three audience choice awards.

Affiliations

From 1994 to 2002, Mosbacher served on the Pitzer College Board of Trustees. In 2011, she established the Mosbacher Fund for Media Studies and the Mosbacher/Gartrell Center for Media Experimentation and Activism at Pitzer College.

Personal life

Mosbacher is the daughter of the late Jane Pennybacker Mosbacher and Robert Mosbacher, who served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1992. She has two sisters and a brother.
Mosbacher and her father had a close relationship despite the Republican Party's largely anti-gay position. In 1992, on a day when the two were both giving commencement speeches, she told a Washington Post reporter that she began her speech: "Dad and I had breakfast this morning. We looked at each other's speeches. He would have used mine but he's not a lesbian. I would have used his, but I'm not a Republican." Dr. Mosbacher spoke out against the gay-bashing and anti-woman focus of the Republican Party's 1992 campaign.
Mosbacher earned a bachelor's degree from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, a doctorate in social psychology from Union Graduate School, and a medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine.
Mosbacher is married to Nanette Gartrell, MD, a researcher, psychiatrist, and author of six books, including My Answer Is NO... If That's Okay With You.

Filmography