Melissa Johnson to Screen and Discuss Film "No Look Pass"

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 27, 2012 – Director Melissa Johnson will screen and discuss her latest film, No Look Pass, at 2:30 p.m. on April 7, at Images Cinema.  The movie follows Harvard senior Emily Tay’s transition from playing college to professional basketball and the challenge of coming out to her traditional Buddhist parents. This event is free and open to the public.

On the court at Harvard, Emily ranks 23rd nationally for assists, largely due to her signature move, the no look pass.  Although her parents risked everything to emigrate from Burma in 1980 and expect Emily to return home after graduation and comply with an arranged marriage, Emily follows her dream to play professional basketball in Germany.  While abroad, she falls in love with a U.S. servicewoman living under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

“I believe that No Look Pass is a film that needed to be made and just so happened to call upon me to make it,” Johnson wrote in her director’s statement.  “I accept this responsibility as an honor and feel tremendously excited to share it with the world.

Johnson, a former Harvard basketball player herself, uses the documentary to explore the sport as a means to an end greater than simply winning games.  Over the course of the story, the court becomes the stage on which Emily works through, and ultimately declares, her strength and inherent self-worth.

No Look Pass received the 2011 Special Programming Award for Freedom at Outfest, the annual Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival.  It has also shown at a variety of festivals, including the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, IndieFest, Cinequest, and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

Over the past 10 years, Johnson has taken leadership roles in documentary film, television, web production, and digital marketing.  In 2008, she directed and produced Act As If, a short documentary about Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith.  In 2010, she co-produced Marion Jones: Press Pause, a documentary for ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 series.

This event is sponsored by the Williams College Department of Asian Studies, the Multicultural Center, the Queer Student Union, the Dively Committee for Human Sexuality and Diversity, AASiA, and the dean’s office.

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Published March 27, 2012