About the film

LOVE AFTER WAR: Saving Love, Saving Lives

About the Issues

LOVE AFTER WAR: Saving Love, Saving Lives is a moving 57 minute documentary that introduces viewers to veterans and their partners who candidly share how they won the battle to restore emotional closeness and physical intimacy after surviving catastrophic combat-related injuries. The inspiring film also features insights from experts in the field of sexuality and disability.


About the Filmmakers

Dr. Mitchell Tepper, Director/Producer/Writer

Dr. Mitchell Tepper in manual wheelchairDr. Mitchell Tepper is a sexologist who has been living a full life with spinal cord injury for nearly 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.

Dr. Mark Schoen, Director/Producer

Dr. Schoen produced many of the popular, early sex therapy films, wrote the children’s book, Bellybuttons Are Navels and produced the award winning film of the same title. In 1998, The Sinclair Institute hired Dr. Schoen as Director of Sex Education. From 1998 – 2006 he produced more than thirty films that are currently in distribution including the best selling revision of The Better Sex Video Series. In 2007 Dr Schoen started working as an independent producer. Since then he produced and directed Betty Dodson: Her Life of Sex and Art that won Best Feature Documentary at FilmOut, San Diego (2008) and won The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists Best Film Award (2009), produced the award-winning documentary Trans (2012), and produced the documentary Game Face (2015).

Joanne Caputo, Collaborating Writer/Director

Caputo began independent filmmaking with a children’s video, Ballerina, Ballerina! (1995), recommended by Sesame St. Magazine. Her first documentary, On A Roll: Family, Disability and the American Dream, was broadcast by PBS Independent Lens, where it won the 2005 Audience Award (www.pbs.org/onaroll) and was recommended by The New York Times, Anti-Defamation League, National Organization on Disability and others. On A Roll represented the USA at numerous international disability film festivals and was selected for PBS international programming (True Stories: Life in the USA) through 2017. Caputo is also the author of Margaret Garner, an American slavery story that she is adapting to a television series with co-writer Michael Ivey. www.joannecaputo.com.

Antonio Garcia, DP and Editor of Pilot Interview

Antonio is a filmmaker at Georgia State University who has had three films shown at the Cannes International Film Festival.


Accolades

The pilot interview for Love After War was chosen to be screened at the annual conference of the American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. Here's their reactions to the film represented in a word cloud:

Word cloud with the largest words: inspired, hopeful, moved, sad

Are you or someone you know a disabled veteran or caregiver? Your story is extremely important.

Have a question or a suggestion about the project? Please contact us!

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