The Question of Equality

Bennett Singer has been making social-issue documentaries for more than 25 years. He co-produced and co-directed Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; was broadcast nationally on PBS’ POV series and Logo; and won more than 20 international awards, including the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary and prizes at LGBTQ film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities. Singer was an associate producer on the Emmy- and Peabody-winning series Eyes on the Prize II; a producer/director on With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right In America; a consulting producer on Codebreaker; and co-director of Electoral Dysfunction, a feature-length documentary about voting in America that won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. The former Executive Editor of Time Magazine’s Education Program, Singer is the editor of 42 Up and the co-author, with his husband David Deschamps, of LGBTQ Stats, which Booklist described as “indispensable” and “astounding.” He is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Video, a Visiting Artist Residency at The American Academy in Rome, and the National Endowment for the Arts Residency for Collaborative Teams at Yaddo.

Since his first high school film in 1970, which depicted a child’s view of war, Arthur Dong has produced films reflecting the resilience of the human spirit in the face of social injustices. His films include stories of immigrants making a new life in America (the Oscar nominated Sewing Woman), Asian-American performers seeking equal participation in the entertainment industry (Forbidden City, U.S.A.), the footbinding of women in China (Lotus); and in his most recent film, Coming Out Under Fire, Dong explores the U.S. government’s systematic persecution of gay and lesbian soldiers. At the Los Angeles PBS station KCET, he produced 10 documentaries for the Life & Times public television series. For his work there, Dong received three Los Angeles Emmy nominations for stories dealing with the Los Angeles riots, the role of the theatre in promoting social change, the plight of the Amerasians, and the fight against homophobia. In addition to the Emmy and Oscar nominations, Dong is the recipient of more than 60 American and International film awards and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. Arthur Dong is a graduate of the Film School at San Francisco State University (1982 Summa Cum Laude) and the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies (1984, Director’s Program).