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CLASS OF ’83

Searching for Ms. Rightowitz

Like many well-meaning parents, Rachel Rosen’s mother and father want to see their daughter settle down. So when she moves from New York to San Diego after a traumatic breakup, her mother insists on setting her up with a “nice” California girl.

Helen Lesnick C’83 (left) as Rachel Rosen in “A Family Affair,” a romantic comedy that she wrote and directed.

In A Family Affair, a romantic comedy written and directed by Helen Lesnick C’83, the difficulty and importance of making a commitment is the central theme, not being gay and coming out.

“I’d been to a lot of gay and lesbian movies,” says Lesnick, who also stars in the independent film, “and in all the movies I had ever seen, [being gay] became the focus. I wanted to make a movie that had gay and lesbian characters in it, but in which that wasn’t the subject.”

The movie, which cost $400,000 to make, has played at film festivals in California, New York, Washington, and Australia—including Cinequest in San Jose, considered one of the top 10 in the world—and will be showing at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in July.

A former rabbinical student who returned to acting, Lesnick incorporated elements of Judaism into the plot, including one pivotal family Passover scene.

“I wanted to make a statement about religion and tolerance,” she says. “I’ve seen a lot of so-called religious leaders steal the spotlight” with their intolerance. “But there are a lot of people who call themselves religious and yet are accepting of others of different cultures or backgrounds or sexual orientations.”

After Lesnick wrote her screenplay, people encouraged her to sell it. By making the film independently—Lesnick’s real-life partner, Valerie Pichney, was the producer—she was able to preserve her original vision. “The disadvantage was that we had to do it all ourselves”—fundraising, casting, and marketing.

Attracting a distributor for the film has been the hardest part. “They want something they’ve already seen, so they know they can make money from it.” But Lesnick believes her film has great crossover appeal. “We’ve had as good of a response from straight audience as from gay audiences.”

Copyright 2002 The Pennsylvania Gazette Last modified 4/28/02