Prognosis - notes on living (Copy)

PROGNOSIS - notes on living

When maverick Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff is diagnosed with stage-4 breast cancer, she faces down injustice as always, with her camera.

With the help of her wife Nancy and their extended LGBTQ+ family, she traces a journey through the twists and turns of living with cancer. What emerges is a raw, intimate portrait of shifting relationships and identities—a story about hanging onto people we love, as we prepare to let them go.

World Premiere

Join us for the PROGNOSIS - notes on living debut screening!

We’ll be gathering virtually at Frameline’s San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival on June 19th at 4pm. The screening of the film will be followed by a Q&A session with members of the filmmaking team. A limited number of tickets are available for the premiere event.

Get Tickets

“PROGNOSIS - notes on living is shaping up to be a powerful and courageous film - deeply and intimately accompanying Debra Chasnoff on her journey to make sense of her illness and face her future with resolve. Like Chas herself, the film will have much to teach us about living a life with passion, honest engagement, humor and strength.”

— Peter L. Stein, filmmaker & senior programmer, Frameline Film Festival

The Team Behind the Story

Before she died, Debra Chasnoff appointed a team of people to finish the PROGNOSIS - notes on living for her. She chose these people because of their skill-sets and the close friendship she had with them. For the past three years, this team has volunteered countless hours to bring this film to life and realize Debra’s last wish.

Carrie Lozano is director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, and is an award winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. She was most recently director of the International Documentary Association's Enterprise Documentary and Pare Lorentz funds, where she supported more than 60 diverse films and filmmakers at the intersection of documentary and journalism. She is on the advisory board of U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where she is an alumnus and has been a lecturer and editor in its documentary film and investigative reporting programs. Lozano was previously an executive at Al Jazeera America and a senior producer of the network’s investigative series Fault Lines.

Kate Stilley Steiner is the co-founder of the not-for-profit media organization, Citizen Film. Her most-recent producing credits include American Creed slated for a national PBS rollout in 2018, and editing credits include documentaries for PBS, The Learning Channel, ABC and Fox. Debra Chasnoff’s long-time collaborator, Kate edited several films with Chasnoff, including two in the Respect for All series, and they co-produced several titles together, including One Wedding and a Revolution.

Lidia Szajko is an award-winning independent filmmaker and film educator whose works have screened on public television and at festivals internationally. She served on the San Francisco Film Commission from 2001 – 2004. As a Member-Owner of New Day Films since 2004, she served on the Steering Committee from 2012-14. She joined the faculty of the Cinema Department at City College of San Francisco in 1999 and served as Chair from 2001 – 2015.

Joan Lefkowitz, a technologist since the 1970s, began with her work at Resource One, the first people’s computer center. Her career has included engineering jobs doing live sound, radio, television and video editing with one exhilarating year of editing Deadly Deception with Debra Chasnoff. In addition she has created and maintained websites for a variety of groups and individuals including a long stint as web manager at the SF Public Library. Her goals have always focused on getting free information to those who need it the most.

Nancy Otto is Debra Chasnoff’s wife and featured in PROGNOSIS - notes on living. She consulted on the final stages of Chasnoff’s films and on the administration of Groundspark. Nancy is also a senior consultant at Klein and Roth Consulting, working exclusively with nonprofit organizations to build and strengthen their individual donor programs. Nancy was the video editor for WTVD-TV News, an ABC affiliate, in Durham, NC.