Laleh Soomekh has worked as a photographer for the past ten years. Before coming to Stanford, she spent five years teaching photography to severely emotionally disturbed youth at a residential treatment center.

Dear Judge
digital video


This video explores how two teenage siblings and their 26 year old sister/legal guardian have coped with their mother's incarceration in a federal prison. When shooting began, Dorothy Gaines had served six years of a twenty-year sentence handed down for a minor drug offense. Unexpectedly, she received a presidential commutation of her sentence before filming was completed; Laleh was fortunate enough to shoot shortly after the family's reunification.

XXXY
digital video
13 min.

"Is it a boy or is it a girl?" The most frequently asked question posed to new parents doesn't apply when a baby is born intersex or with ambiguous genitalia. "XXXY" is an intimate portrait of two individuals, Kristi and Howard, born "not wholly male and not wholly female." In candid interviews, Kristi and Howard openly talk about the emotional, psychological and physiological impact of being born intersex.

AWARDS: Best Student Documentary Award, Palm Springs Shorts Festival, Jury Award Winner, New York Exposition of Short Film and Video, Honorable Mention, Making Waves Film Festival
FESTIVALS: Over a dozen national and international festivals.
BROADCASTS: Through The Lens (Philadelphia, PBS)
DISTRIBUTION: University of California/Berkeley, Kate Spohr, 510-643-2788 or http://www-cmil.unex.berkeley.edu/media/

Breath
16mm, black and white film
3 min.

Breath focuses on an eighty year old woman who is forced to confront her own aging when she leaves her home of forty years to live in a retirement hotel.