War, Love and Family: Healing Stories

[Image description: New Day Films logo in left corner Text reads Reframe and Refresh War love and family healing stories there are three portraits Dr. Mitchell Tepper director or Love After War who is a bald man with sunglasses sitting in a wheelchair with trees in the background,Corey Ohama director of Double Solitaire who is a woman with dark hair pulled back wearing glasses with a body of water and mountains in the background and Dr. Jack Saul, psychologist and founding director of International Trauma Studies Program who is a man with dark short wavy hair]

Join us for this powerful conversation about healing from the impact of war and finding love after trauma with filmmakers Dr. Mitchell Tepper, director of Love After War: Saving Love, Saving Lives, Corey Ohama, director of Double Solitaire, and Dr. Jack Saul, psychologist and founding director of the International Trauma Studies Program. Register to reserve your spot for this Zoom meeting.

You will receive the link to join this virtual discussion in your email after registration. Auto-captions will be available.

REFRAME AND REFRESH is a series for the education and filmmaking community to have refreshing conversations that reframe our perspectives.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr. Mitchell Tepper is the director of Love After War: Saving Love, Saving Lives. Also the executive director, producer, and writer, Tepper is a sexologist who has been living a full life with spinal cord injury for over 40 years. He has long been personally and professionally dedicated to ending the silence around sexuality and disabilities. Dr. Tepper has been working with wounded veterans since speaking at the Road to Recovery Conference for wounded veterans in 2006. Through spearheading the Wounded Troops and Partners: Supporting Intimate Relationships Conference in Washington DC in 2008, he was successful in getting the issue of sexual health and intimacy for wounded warriors on the national radar. He assisted the Bob Woodruff Foundation in organizing their High Impact Collaboration Conference, From Injury to Intimacy, in 2014. He has been instrumental in the implementation of couple's retreats within the VA system and in training members of the Sexual Health and Intimacy Workgroup at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Dr. Tepper has published peer reviewed articles in medical and sexual health journals on comprehensive sexual health care for catastrophically injured warriors.

Corey Ohama is an award-winning director and editor whose films take an artistic approach to social issues. Her documentary, I Was Born in Mexico, But… is a found footage portrait of a young woman growing up undocumented in America. Her documentary Double Solitaire (1998) looks at the legacy of the WWII Japanese incarceration on her father and uncle who were incarcerated as children. Corey holds an MFA in Film from San Francisco State University, and a B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University.

Jack Saul, PhD is a psychologist, artist and the founding director of the International Trauma Studies Program (ITSP), a research and training institute based in New York City. He has served on the faculties of the New York University School of Medicine, the New School for Social Research, and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. As a psychologist and family therapist, he has created a number of programs both in New York City and abroad for populations that have endured disaster, war, torture, and political violence. His book Collective Trauma, Collective Healing, documenting his experience, was republished by Routledge in their Mental Health Classic Series in 2022. Dr. Saul is currently working on a public arts and conversation project entitled Moral Injuries of War about the need to have a national public reckoning about United States war-making and war culture. www.jacksaul.org

ABOUT THE FILMS

Love After War delves deep into the intimate lives of injured veterans and their romantic partners. It is a story of coming home and sexual healing. The accounts illustrate how each faces the challenges of disability and musters up the courage beyond what was needed for war to restore connection.

In Double Solitaire, the filmmaker uses the motif of games to tell the story of her Japanese-American father and uncle’s incarceration as children in an internment camp during WWII, and the legacy of that experience up to the present day, including the effect of Redress and Reparations.

ABOUT NEW DAY FILMS

New Day Films is a unique, filmmaker-run distribution cooperative, providing award-winning films to educators, community groups, government agencies, public libraries and businesses since 1971. Democratically run by more than 150 filmmaker members, New Day is committed to reflecting greater diversity, representation and inclusion. It is celebrating 50 years of delivering dynamic and provocative storytelling with filmmakers who have won Oscars, Emmys and hundreds of film festival awards. New Day films have been broadcast on PBS, HBO and other media outlets.