Johanna Demetrakas

Director

Biography

Filmmaker and director Johanna Demetrakas has directed episodes of many television series including L.A. Law and Orde and Doogie Howser, M.D. She has also made award-winning film OUT OF LINE, starring Jennifer Beals, and the short film Homesick. She is also known for her award-winning documentaries and iconic feminist art films such as WOMANHOUSE and RIGHT OUT OF HISTORY. Most recently, Demetrakas directed a documentary focused on the arrival of Buddhism to the U.S. in the 70’s entitled CRAZY WI…

Filmography

7.1

L.A. Law

L.A. Law is an American television legal drama series that ran for eight seasons on NBC from September 15, 1986, to May 19, 1994. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features including a large number of parallel storylines, social drama and off-the-wall humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual harassment, AIDS, and domestic violence. The series often also reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their less well-paid junior staff. The show was popular with audiences and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards throughout its run, four of which were for Outstanding Drama Series.

6.4

Doogie Howser, M.D.

Doogie Howser is a doctor. He is also a 16-year-old genius who graduated college at age 10 and finished medical school at age 14. But he is still a teenager, with normal teenage friends and problems. But unlike a normal teenager, he is just learning to drive while also consulting on serious medical cases like heart transplants.

7.5

Feminists: What Were They Thinking?

In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.

8.0

Out of Line

Henry, a hitman hired to take out a socialite, finds himself falling for Jenny, a parole officer, instead.

5.1

Some Nudity Required

A woman working in the B movie industry begins examining the industry and the damaged, desperate people who work in it.

9.0

Bus Rider's Union

A 1998 editorial in Time magazine made the claim that the city of Los Angeles "might just have the most inept public-transport system on the planet earth. . . . The neglected bus system, which still handles 91% of all transit riders,is now roughly as efficient as travel by burro." Academy Award–winning cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, Latino) has now fashioned a new documentary tracing three years in the life of a group of bus-rider activists passionately engaged in the struggle to bring affordable, safe, and adequate mass transit back to their city. What might at first sound like a well-intentioned but rather parochial subject for a film has resulted in a truly inspiring lesson in how working-class, predominantly minority citizens forge an effective social movement and how, like Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycotters of the 1950s, a group of committed individuals can successfully challenge the powers that seek to control their lives.

5.5

Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

CRAZY WISDOM explores the arrival of Tibetan Buddhism in America through the story of Chögyam Trungpa, who landed in the U.S. in 1970. Trungpa became renowned for translating ancient Buddhist concepts into language and ideas that Westerners could understand and shattered preconceived notions about how an enlightened teacher should behave. Initially rejected, his teachings are now recognized by western philosophers and spiritual leaders as authentic and profound.

3.7

Celebration at Big Sur

Star-studded show recorded at the Big Sur Folk Festival, Big Sur, California, September 13th and 14th, 1969. Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian, and others. This film captures a remarkable moment in folk, rock, and pop history - the famous folk festival that brought traditional acts like Dorothy Morrison & The Combs Sisters and Carol Ann Cisneros together with the psychedelic rockers of the day who were most deeply rooted in the folk revival. Older songs like ‘Oh Happy Day,’ ‘Rise And Shine,’ ‘All God’s Children,’ and ‘Swing Down, Sweet Chariot’ meet Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock,’ Joan Baez’s ‘Sweet Sir Galahad,’ ‘Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released,’ CSNY’s ‘Down By The River,’ and many more of the now-classic songs of what was then called the ‘new rock.’ The scene is notably intimate and - aside from one fan’s dustup with Stephen Stills - mellow, with many rare, close-up moments with the stars.

8.0

Right Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party

For five years, feminist artist Judy Chicago worked with a community of four hundred other artists, craftspeople and researchers to create The Dinner Party, a monumental tribute to women of spirit and accomplishment throughout the ages -- women whose names have been banished "right out of history". For over four of those five years, filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas followed the progress of The Dinner Party, recording for posterity the alternately painstaking and exhilarating process of creating this work of unprecedented scale and beauty.

8.0

Womanhouse

Held in 1972 at 533 N. Mariposa Street, Los Angeles was one of the most important cultural events in the United States: "Womanhouse," a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro.

You've seen it all! · 10 titles displayed