Nuclear Family

The rites of Texas football, cheerleading, and weddings shed light on how we pass sexual identity on to our children.

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Length
60 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
Producer

Don Howard

Don Howard is a filmmaker and editor from Texas, and an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches film and video editing. He was a founding member of the New Orleans Filmmakers’s Collective. He founded One Big Eye Film/Video Post Production Services in Austin in 1994. Howard has been the editor for a number of narrative and Show more documentary films, including Cultivating Charlie and Dazed and Confused. Show less

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The Film

Nuclear Family plunges into the rites of Texas football, cheerleading, and weddings to look at how boys and girls have traditionally matured into men and women. Each ritual has its own larger-than-life characters — the star quarterback's dad, the cheerleader mom, and an unexpected pair of young honeymooners. These Texans form a cinéma vérité metaphor for the American family, and shine a light on how we pass sexual identity on to our children.

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