Diane Hazzard was a loving mother, but like other young, inner-city African-Americans in the 1980s, she was swept up in the crack cocaine epidemic. Inevitably, her parenting suffered with her addiction, until her own daughter, Love, only eight years old, told a teacher that she and her five siblings were often left home alone and hungry. As revealed in Love & Diane, a remarkable documentary feature having its national broadcast premiere on public television’s P.O.V. series, Love’s action set in motion the often unforgiving machinery of the child welfare system. It also brought a legacy of abandonment, hurt and shame that haunts mother and daughter to this day – and which, most chillingly, threatens Love’s relationship with her own baby boy, Donyaeh.

Jennifer Dworkin’s Love & Diane airs on PBS on Wednesday, April 21, at 9 p.m., in a special 2004 spring edition of public television’s groundbreaking P.O.V. series, American television’s most-watched independent documentary showcase. (Check local listings.)

“Cycle of poverty” is a term more used than understood. Love & Diane puts a human face on it, delivering an intimate portrait of one family’s struggles with poverty, addiction, and broken homes. Told vérité-style, without narration or expert “talking heads,” the film is also a story of redemption, as a mother and daughter strive to understand each other and make a better life for themselves.

Love & Diane picks up on the Hazzard family in Brooklyn, New York, ten years after Love’s fateful revelation to her teacher. For six of those ten years, the Hazzard children, of whom Love is the oldest, had been shuttled separately through the foster-care system. Then, against all odds, the family had reunited – thanks to Diane’s daunting but ultimately successful fight to kick drugs and prove to the child-welfare bureaucracy that she was fit to be a mother. They had all dreamed of their reunion, but when it came, it wasn’t as they had imagined.

The family’s happiness was tempered by feelings of estrangement. Years of separation – gaps in the children’s formative years that Diane could never recover – left the children feeling they hardly knew their mother or each other. Most traumatically, Diane soon finds herself confronting a tragic reminder of her troubled past – Love is now 18, HIV-positive, and a new single mother who is increasingly neglectful of her baby.

Consumed by guilt, Diane, who was herself abandoned as a child, throws her religious faith and considerable determination into creating and sustaining a home for the family. But Love is torn between her own feelings of guilt for the family’s breakup, a barely contained rage at her mother, and ambivalent feelings toward her infant son. Donyaeh has come into the world burdened not only with the family’s hopes but with the consequences of its past. It will be months before the child’s HIV status is known for sure. Love, meanwhile, incapacitated by her emotions, begins neglecting her maternal duties.

Diane, already supporting a home for her other children, does her best to create a loving and positive environment for Donyaeh. But she fears that Love really is incapable of caring for the child and, in a fateful turn, Diane confides her fears to a therapist. Suddenly, the police are at the door. Donyaeh is taken from Love. Love now faces the same ordeal her mother had faced years before. She must get her life together and prove to a well-intentioned but Byzantine system of social workers, therapists and prosecutors that she can be a fit mother. She must also face the anger and shame that has led her into making her mother’s story her own.

In the course of telling its story, Love & Diane reveals a contentious child-welfare system whose sanctions sometimes hurt the very women and children they are supposed to protect. But the film also reveals the resilience and courage of these same women in fighting to rescue themselves and their children from the wasted poverty zones of America’s cities. Ultimately uplifting, Love & Diane is a real-life triumph of the spirit and a profoundly moving portrait of a family surviving in spite of insurmountable odds.

There are no easy answers in Love & Diane. In Diane’s heroic rise and Love’s terrible descent – and in their conflicted relationship and universal need for forgiveness – there are equal doses of hope and despair. Dworkin’s close relationship with the Hazzard family, some of whom she met while a volunteer in a Harlem homeless shelter, gives Love & Diane the riveting, epic sweep of classic cinéma vérité documentaries.

“This is not the kind of film that anyone could have made quickly,” says Dworkin, who spent the better part of ten years making Love & Diane. “This is a film that resulted from a long relationship and a good deal of trust between me and the Hazzard family. It’s also a film that was very much shaped by Love and Diane themselves, because they knew how they wanted to talk about their lives and they have a coherent vision of their lives – more coherent than most people. They are also very expressive, which is one of the qualities that drew me to their story.”

About the Filmmaker:
Jennifer Dworkin
Director/Producer

Love & Diane is Jennifer Dworkin's first film. Born in New York, she grew up in England, returning to the United States for college. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at Cornell University. Dworkin is the recipient of several research fellowships and was awarded the 1997 Fellowship for Excellence in Research and Academic Promise in the Cognitive Sciences from Cornell University. Dworkin has known some members of the Hazzard family portrayed in Love & Diane since 1989, when she taught photography workshops for children in New York City’s shelter system. These workshops grew into a program teaching kids still photography and filmmaking with Super-8 cameras. Dworkin learned filmmaking in the course of making Love & Diane over several years.

Credits:

Producer/Director: Jennifer Dworkin
Editor: Mona Davis

Cinematography: Tsuyoshi Kimoto

Executive Producer: Jennifer Fox

Consulting Producer: Doug Block

Additional Camera: Doug Block, Jennifer Dworkin, Aaron Edison, Robert Fiske, Victoria Ford, Jason Longo, Frederick Nielson, Justin Schein, Carolina Zorilla de San Martin

Additional Sound
Recording: Eddie O’Connor, John Tipton

Consultants: Roger Graef, Robert Kiley, Michelle Materre

Awards:

Locarno International Film Festival 2002 – Golden Leopard Award
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2003 – MTV News Documentary Award
One World International Film Festival 2003 – Best Documentary
Independent Spirit Awards 2003 – IFC Truer Than Fiction Award

Co-presenters:

ITVS funds and presents award-winning documentaries and dramas on public television, innovative new media projects on the Web and the PBS series Independent Lens. ITVS was established by an historic mandate of Congress to champion independently produced programs that take creative risks, spark public dialogue and serve underserved audiences. Since its inception in 1991, ITVS programs have helped to revitalize the relationship between the public and public television. ITVS is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. Contact itvs@itvs.org or www.itvs.org. Love & Diane was produced in association with the Independent Television Service.

Now entering its 17th season on PBS, P.O.V. is the first and longest-running series on television to feature the work of America’s most innovative documentary storytellers. Bringing over 200 award-winning films to millions nationwide, and now a new Web-only series, P.O.V.’s Borders, P.O.V. has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent non-fiction media to build new communities in conversation about today’s most pressing social issues.

P.O.V. Interactive (www.pbs.org/pov)
P.O.V.'s award-winning Web department produces our Web-only showcase for interactive storytelling, P.O.V.’s Borders. It also produces a Web site for every P.O.V. presentation, extending the life of P.O.V. films through community-based and educational applications, focusing on involving viewers in activities, information and feedback on the issues. In addition, www.pbs.org/pov houses our unique Talking Back feature, filmmaker interviews and viewer resources, and information on the P.O.V. archives as well as a myriad of special sites for previous P.O.V. broadcasts.

Major funding for P.O.V. is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Educational Foundation of America, PBS and public television viewers. Funding for Talking Back and P.O.V.’s Borders (www.pbs.org/pov) is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. P.O.V. is presented by a consortium of public television station including KCET/Los Angeles, WGBH/Boston, and WNET/New York. Cara Mertes is executive director of P.O.V. P.O.V. is a division of American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. (www.americandocumentary.org)
American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia company dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. Through two divisions, P.O.V. and Active Voice, AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture; developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, on line and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback, to educational opportunities and community participation.

P.O.V.'s Love & Diane is a PBS Program Club pick. PBS Program Clubs work like book clubs, but for TV. Talk about Love & Diane with your friends, family or co-workers. Discuss what "cycle of poverty" means to you or chat about the child-welfare system in your area. Visit www.pbs.org/pbsprogramclub to find out how to start your own club and get tips on getting the conversation started.

NOTE FROM AFRICAN AMERICAN NEWSWIRE: If you run this article, please forward the hard copy news clip or an web address for where the article is posted on the Internet. Send the clips to: African American Newswire, P.O. Box 80837, Springfield, MA 01138 or forward via email, to jfondon@unityfirst.com All participating publishers will be recognized for their great work. Also, to be included on African American Newswire's preferred list for advertisers, we invite you to send your publication to us on a regular basis. Please call Janine Fondon, if you have questions: 800-286-3659.

###