TWO SPIRITS
A Film by Lydia Nibley
Produced by Say Yes Quickly, Riding The Tiger, Just Media
More information at www.twospirits.org
TWO SPIRITS interweaves the tragic story of a mother’s loss of her son with a revealing look at the largely unknown history of a time when the world wasn’t simply divided into male and female and many Native American cultures held places of honor for people of integrated genders.
Fred Martinez was nádleehí, a male-bodied person with a feminine nature, a special gift according to his ancient Navajo culture. He was one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered at sixteen by a young man who bragged to friends that he had “bug-smashed a fag.” TWO SPIRITS explores the life and death of a boy who was also a girl and the essentially spiritual nature of gender and sexuality. The film makes the case that in the twenty-first century we need to return to traditional values.
THE PRODUCTION TEAM FOR TWO SPIRITS
Rock music icon and political activist Patti Smith contributed music to the production, as did a number of Native artists who record with Canyon Records.
Producer and co-writer Russell Martin’s bestselling books have been translated into numerous languages and the television and film projects to which he has contributed have won numerous awards. The international television documentary, Beethoven’s Hair, based on his book of the same name, has been screened at film festivals and broadcast throughout the world. It has received three Gemini Awards, and the Festival Director’s Prize at the International Television Film Festival.
Henry Ansbacher is an Executive Producer of TWO SPIRITS and the Executive Director of Just Media. His film Iron Ladies of Liberia has been broadcast around the world and his film They Killed Sister Dorothy aired on HBO and won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival and was short-listed for an Academy Award nomination in 2008. His film The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009.
Editor Darrin Navarro edited Bug for famed director William Friedkin, and the film received the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. He produced and edited the documentary film The Painter’s Voice, also directed by William Friedkin, as well as the feature films Grace; Momma’s Man, an official selection at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Hate Crime, an official selection at the 2005 Palm Spring International Film Festival, and numerous other shorts, documentaries, and features.
David A. Armstrong, Two Spirits’ director of photography, began his career in documentary film and has since served as the principal cinematographer for more than a dozen feature films, including the films in the Saw horror series. He has also shot numerous television productions including Crime & Punishment and Lyric Cafe.
Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer Ron Eng’s credits include Coraline, Lakeview Terrace, Darfur Now, Bug, Vanilla Sky, Mulholland Drive, Independence Day, and Return to Neverland, among many other films.
More information at www.twospirits.org
