The First Tuesday Social Justice Film Festival

3839 W. Kiest Blvd., Dallas, Texas 75233 Phone: 214.337.2429 
Cosponsored by the Dallas Peace & Justice Center

This screening of Denial is being cosponsored by
PlanetTransgender.com

Every month, at 7:00pm on the first Tuesday, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Oak Cliff screens a film focusing on an important social justice issue. We hope you'll leave inspired and ready to hit the road in your own quest for a better world.

The best way to make a difference in the world is to first learn how others have done so. Is there a film you'd love to see to inspire you? Perhaps you have that one movie that just recharges you before a social justice battle. If so, please share with us, and we'll see about putting it on our list of films to show at the UUCOC First Tuesday Social Justice Film Festival.

October 2^nd:

 
Denial
visit the website

This screening is cosponsored by the
Dallas Peace & Justice Center

This screening of Denial is being cosponsored by
PlanetTransgender.com

The CEO of an energy company sets his family into a state of flux with a staggering secret while dealing with a much larger crisis at work. Denial tells exactly the kind of complex, deeply personal story about climate change we need at this moment.

“A moving portrayal of a family in flux set in the context of a larger world in crisis…The film wisely asks, how will we – as individuals, as community members, as a species – adapt to a changing world? It also begs a question not typically found in ‘traditional’ environmental documentaries: Can more inclusive, dynamic understandings of gender and sexuality lead us to more courageous thinking about how to sustain life on an ailing planet?”

- Lauran Whitworth, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies, Agnes Scott College

From the website:
DENIAL follows the story of Christine Hallquist, first Transgender Candidate for Governor, seen through the lens of her filmmaker son Derek, to whom she has granted intimate access for nearly 15 years. Before Christine Hallquist was running for Governor of Vermont, she was David Hallquist, the CEO of the largest locally owned electric utility in Vermont.  A self-described “closet environmentalist” Hallquist is dedicated to addressing the way electricity use in America contributes to climate change.  But his mission is balanced with the utility’s charge to provide affordable and reliable service.  For Hallquist, increasing the efficiency of the grid is the only meaningful route to merging these priorities.

He implements one of the country’s first ‘smart’  grids, decreasing outages, increasing the capacity for renewable sources and building  a national reputation as an energy pioneer.  Resistance, however, comes in many forms – traditionalists balk at the renewable  intermittency, solar and wind advocates think Hallquist is dragging his feet, and the public fears that ‘smart’ meters on their homes  will send private information about their energy use to the government. As Hallquist struggles to build the kind of transparent company whose honest approach can  get stakeholders to accept the realities of how we generate and deliver electricity, he realizes he must apply that same transparency to his personal life and reveals to his son a lifelong secret. Dave Hallquist, who presents as a chainsaw-wielding, hard hat-wearing CEO in a male-dominated industry is a woman inside.

Now, Derek’s family must face facts that feel far more immediate than the melting of the polar ice caps and denial emerges as a common theme linking all of these issues.  Ultimately the personal and the societal come together as Derek learns that his father, newly named Christine,  is still indeed his father – and that Christine’s unique perspective as the first American Transgender CEO to transition in office, may be just the what the limiting, binary worldview on energy and the environment needs.

You can view the trailer here:
https://youtu.be/L9Sq5j09HDA