Director:
Tom Keegan
Producer:
Gopika Sharma
Screenwriter:
Cinematography:
Mo Stoebe; Jesse Phinney
Editor:
Mo Stoebe; Gopika Sharma
Music:
Tom Zehnder
Cast:
Peter Carley, David Gere, Richard Gere
Country:
USA/India
Running Time:
71 minutes
Synopsis:
Out in India: A Family’s Journey captures gay partners David Gere, Peter Carley, and their two adopted children as they leave Los Angeles for nine months in India fighting AIDS. Their weapon? Painters, puppeteers, and performers of every kind. Out in India examines the role of gay people and artists in fighting HIV on a global scale, and goes far beyond other stories about gay families. Pushed to the breaking point in the crucible of India’s traditional, marriage-centric society, the film explores the costs and joys of the family’s activism, set on the brilliantly colored stage of 21st century India.
Filmmaker Bio
Director TOM KEEGAN has created other pieces on gay families, including the award-winning short film Sweet Life which has screened throughout the globe. Know for his work in performance/theatre, many of his stage pieces explore the terrain of long-term gay relationships, AIDS, and travel, including Bombay Lunch, a memoir of India in the 1980s. Tom is also well known as a voice director for a wide array of video games such as Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Men of Valor, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and the critically acclaimed The Darkness. This is his first full length film.
Director’s Statement
When I first heard David and Peter were going to India for a year on an AIDS “mission,” taking their 3 and 4 year old children, I thought they were crazy. Having traveled in India myself, I knew it was not a Paris vacation by any means. In India, gay people are invisible, underground, and certainly not clamoring for marriage or adoption rights. They graciously consented to allow me to film their story. To create the impact I hoped for with this film, I thought I needed to capture skeletal third world AIDS sufferers in the final throes of agony, but I kept meeting tough survivors whose spirit inspired me more. Eventually what emerged right in front of my eyes was the universal struggle of this unique family, 9000 miles from home, trying to balance their needs and wants within the larger context of very visible human suffering. Ultimately, their story became a story activists and artists, and of the power of the arts to heal and foster change through a new movement called “Make Art/Stop AIDS.”