New York, NY (Top40 Charts) CSUN psychology professor and filmmaker Luciana Lagana's OFF THE STREETS FOR GOOD - her latest award-winning social impact feature documentary - will be shown for free at the 2018 Shawna Shea Film Festival in Southbridge, Massachusetts, on October 4 at 2 p.m.
"It is a great honor for my film to be chosen to screen for free at this wonderful festival," shared Lagana. "The director of the festival contacted me explaining that there is a homelessness problem in the area of the festival, so every year he offers one film for free as a public service on this important issue. This year, OFF THE STREETS FOR GOOD was the film chosen."
The excerpts below are from the online news article entitled "Film on homelessness to be shown at festival in Southbridge" by Patrick Bracken, a 'Citizen Chronicle' entertainment writer who wrote an informative article about Lagana and her film.
When the Shawna Shea Film Festival opens here this Thursday, it does so with a free screening of a powerful documentary about homelessness told from the point of view of survivors and the professionals who are trying to help.
Dr. Lagana's goal in making Off the
Streets for Good is to increase empathy for the homeless by showing them as ordinary people. Dr. Lagana's focus is on education. "We need to involve children in their understanding and empathy of the homeless. We need to get families and children involved at the beginning of their lives to stop the stereotyping of the homeless." With Off the
Streets for Good, Dr. Lagana begins that process.
"I try to stick my neck where it's the worst," she says. "I'm trying to improve empathy and attitudes towards this minority, [the homeless]."
Off the
Streets for Good accomplishes this goal via interviews with four survivors of homelessness who have successfully turned their lives around. Unlike many stories of the homeless, this film avoids showing the day-to-day realities of being homeless: the cardboard boxes, the soup kitchens, life on the streets. Instead it shows viewers four ex-homeless who could be the people next door, survivors of an ordeal most don't want to imagine.
Viewers can see Off the
Streets for Good for free at the Shawna Shea Film Festival at the Ruth Wells Center for the Arts (formerly the QVCAH Arts Center), located at 111 Main Street, Southbridge. The showtime is Thursday, October 4 at 2 p.m. Don't miss this powerful film.
For more information about the Shawna Shea Film Festival, visit https://www.shawnasheaff.org. For the full text of the Citizen Chronicle article by Patrick Bracken cited above, visit https://www.thecitizenchronicle.com/southbridge-community/offthestreetsforgood093018/
Dr. Luciana Lagana is a caring clinical and experimental psychologist. She is also an established professor of psychology, gerontology, sexuality, and women's health at CSUN, where she teaches classes and mentors many undergraduate and graduate students from several departments. Additionally, she conducts government-funded research on ethnically diverse, mainly low-income older women's physical, psychological, social, and sexual health. Concerning her artistic pursuits, since 2006 she has been studying acting and hosting in Los Angeles (in her teens, she was part of a touring theatrical company in Italy). Moreover, after studying film production under the mentorship of Prof. Nate Thomas,
Director of the Film Production option in the CSUN Department of Cinema and Television Arts, she has been producing several social impact films and series. She is an actor/screenwriter/director/producer with over 30 film festivals' wins listed on IMDb and more than 50 IMDb film, TV, and web series' credits. For instance, she created, hosted, and directed the award-winning educational project Dr. Luciana Show - Aging and Falling. At CSUN, Prof. Lagana won the 2017 CSUN Exceptional Creative Accomplishments Faculty Award for her anti-bias feature films and shows, as well as the 2011 Preeminent Scholarly Publications Faculty Award and the 2008 Visionary Community Service Learning Faculty Award.
