New Film “One Stride: Chosen Family”

Director Stephen Winter talks about his new documentary “One Stride: Chosen Family” with Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson host of OUTTAKE VOICES™ that was produced in collaboration with Ned Stresen-Reuter and Barefoot Wine premiering at Outfest last month. The documentary amplifies diverse stories of our LGBTQ community and speaks to the importance of finding one's chosen family. The documentary celebrates the stories of three sets of LGBTQ friends and families to shine a light on how the community supports each other through a “chosen family.” The cast features “Pose” star Mj Rodriguez with her best friend Mila Jam a transgender singer, songwriter, dancer, actress and LGBTQ activist. The film begins with the late LGBTQ civil rights trailblazer 82 year old Richard Leitsch founder of the Mattachine Society who is interviewed by his friend the much younger Paul Havern and joined by his fiancé Ricardo Guadarrama. The film also includes Danielle Rizzi and Daniela Ricci two Italian New Jersey wives celebrating their chosen and diverse families. We talked to Stephen about his fabulous short documentary and his spin on our LGBTQ issues.

When asked what he hopes to accomplish with “One Stride: Chosen Family” Winter stated, “The accomplishment that I’m looking for with this documentary is to give people a fifteen minute respite from all the noise and confusion that we usually get from the media that’s thrust upon us. You know we’re living in a rough time and LGBT rights are under attack, people are tense and nervous and there’s always bad news looming. What this documentary gives us is some good news which is the human condition is a beautiful thing and outside of your blood family there is a chosen family that you can have. Those bonds can be as tight or even tighter than the ones that you come from. I believe that if you watch this stuff that we made and you see these images and meet these people, these ladies and gents, it’s like chicken soup for the soul. I want to make people feel good for fifteen minutes and let that radiate for the rest of their day. Friendship is a thing that should be honored and sometimes in the rush of our day-to-day lives we forget to honor it. I want to give people a beautiful reminder and make them smile. There are a lot of laughs in this documentary. Every segment has a lot of humor to it because when you’re best friends with somebody you make each other laugh. You have through private jokes that only you guys know but watching two people share it can be a beautiful thing and that is what I wanted this documentary to do. Create a beautiful thing that makes people smile.”

Stephen Winter is an award-winning film director, screenwriter consultant and producer. He has been professionally helping people fix, repair, rearrange, renovate or otherwise resolve their short film scripts, feature edits and scripts for over 15 years. His films include Chocolate Babies (1996, premiere Berlin Film Festival), Young Men Big Dreams: Inside the World of the Steve Harvey Mentoring Camp (2014) for NBC/Universal and Jason and Shirley (2015). Some of the films he has worked on include Precious (2008, Sundance, Cannes), Paperboy (2010) and Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2012, Cannes) to name a few. Barefoot Wine that produced and presented the film has been a longstanding ally to our LGBTQ community since 1988. The brand sponsors over 200 LGBTQ events around the world each year and earlier this year in celebration of Pride Month Barefoot launched its Barefoot Bestie Label program benefiting Outfest to continue building community by celebrating stories of LGBTQ lives.
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