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Filmmaker Bio

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Sheila Ganz
, MA, is writer, director, producer, camera and editor.  She completed the documentary Unlocking the Heart of Adoption in 2003.  This 56 minute film bridges the gap between birth and adoptive families through diverse personal stories of adoptees, birthparents and adoptive parents in both same race and transracial adoptions who reveal their innermost feelings, fears and joys, and the complexities of the adoption experience.  Transracial adoptions, issues of closed records, historical perspective and the personal story of the filmmaker - who was raped at age 20 and unwillingly relinquished her child - make this film the most comprehensive to date. Throughout the film, as Ganz tells her story, she constructs a sculpture of a mother holding her baby in a hospital bed using chicken wire, bamboo, burlap and plaster.   She searched for and found her daughter in 1988.

Ganz does trainings for adoption agencies and conferences.  Nearly 100 adoption agencies around the country and in Bermuda, England and Canada use the film as an educational tool.  Dozens of college and university courses in social work, nursing, women's studies, ethnic studies and family law use the film.  Ganz wrote a Workbook and 3 hour curriculum for the film on the issues of loss and identity with the Child Welfare Institute. In 2005, the film was launched on public television by NETA, National Educational Telecommunications Association. For more information visit: http://www.unlockingtheheart.com

From 2004 to 2007, Ganz was an instructor at Film Arts Foundation. Ganz is an adoption reform advocate testifying before the California House and Senate Judiciary Committees on adult adoptee civil rights and birthmother rights. She has been a guest on television and radio talk shows.  Her ‘Letters to the Editor’ have been published in newspapers nationally.

Ganz attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA and completed her studies at San Francisco State University, earning a BA in Sculpture in 1982 and an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts in 1985.  In 1984, Ganz earned her Black Belt in Karate.  Her site-specific sculptures have been exhibited at the Moscone Center, Golden Gate Park and Bernal Heights in San Francisco, the Paul F. Romberg Center in Tiburon and was commissioned to make a site-specific work for Shenandaoh Vineyards in Plymouth, CA.  She has written two full-length plays, Pretend It Didn’t Happen about her experience as a birthmother and Leaving Joe about domestic violence. 

Ganz's experiences have led to her own self-healing and deep commitment to contribute to the empowerment of others. Here is what she has to say about making Moms Living Clean:

"In 1969, I was in a Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers for the last two months of my pregnancy where I was given no choice but to relinquish my newborn daughter for adoption.  I always wondered… ‘Why can’t there be homes to help mothers keep their children?’  I wanted this to be the subject of my next film and then I found Center Point, Inc.  I called Dr. Sushma Taylor, their Chief Executive Officer, told her my idea and I met with her top staff.  They were very responsive to my making the film.  It felt like the perfect match."

Please contact us at: 415.564.3691 or momslivingclean@att.net if you or your group would like to host a fundraising screening.

                                

(c) 2009 Sheila Ganz