Johnny Symons
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Johnny Symons |
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Email: johnny@johnnysymons.com |
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Johnny Symons is an Emmy-nominated documentary video and filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His film Daddy & Papa, about the personal, cultural and political impact of gay men raising kids premiered at Sundance, won more than 15 major festival awards, aired nationally on PBS' Independent Lens and received a national Emmy nomination for Best Documentary. His film Beyond Conception, a feature documentary about the relationship between a lesbian surrogate and a gay male couple as they conceive and bear a child, premiered at the Florida Film Festival and aired on Discovery Health Channel. Symons is the co-producer of the Academy Award-nominated Long Night's Journey Into Day, a feature documentary about South Africa's search for truth and reconciliation and winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. His newest documentary, Ask Not, about gays and lesbians serving in the US military under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival and is currently on the festival circuit before its national broadcast on PBS' Independent Lens. Symons has been creating films on gay culture for more than 15 years, including Beauty Before Age, an exploration of the fear of growing older in the gay male community, which received an NEMN Gold Apple and an IDA nomination; Shaving the Castro, a portrait of a 70-year old Castro Street barber shop, which aired nationally on public television; and Out in Africa, an exploration of black African gay life, which was named Best Documentary at the Turin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. He has freelanced as a segment producer for the PBS gay and lesbian cultural affairs show, In the Life, since 1998. Symons graduated with honors from Brown University and has a Masters degree in documentary production from Stanford University. He currently teaches documentary film at Stanford and the Art Institute of California-San Francisco. |
