Cured

Patrick Sammon is the Founder and President of Story Center Films, LLC. He is the Co-Director and Co-Producer, with Bennett Singer, of a documentary about the remarkable and little-known story of the LGBT activists who successfully battled the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Until 1973, the medical establishment considered every gay person mentally ill. CURED tells the David-versus-Goliath story of the activists who challenged this diagnosis – and won. Combining eyewitness testimony with newly unearthed archival footage, the film reveals how a small group of impassioned activists achieved this unexpected victory.

Previously, Sammon was the Creator and Executive Producer of CODEBREAKER a “superb” (The Telegraph), “imaginative” (Sunday Times), award-winning drama-documentary that “artfully explored” (The Mail) the life and legacy of Alan Turing, one of the 20th century’s most important people. Turing helped win World War II through his code-breaking and laid the intellectual foundation for the computer age. Instead of being celebrated, however, he faced brutal persecution from the British government because he was gay.

Bennett Singer is an award-winning New York-based filmmaker/writer with 20 years of experience. His feature-length film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin premiered at Sundance, was broadcast nationally on PBS, and is currently airing on Logo/MTV. The film won more than 25 international awards, including the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary and eight Best Documentary prizes. Described as “powerful and startling” (The Advocate), “poignant” (Time), and “brilliant” (Wall Street Journal), the film illuminates the life and work of Bayard Rustin, a visionary activist and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr. who dared to live as an openly gay man during the fiercely homophobic 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Brother Outsider has been screened at the Kennedy Center, the United Nations, and for members of Congress, as well as at more than 200 festivals and community screenings in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. It has also been used by an array of social-justice organizations, including Facing History and Ourselves; GLSEN; and Human Rights Watch, which has shown the film to more than 4,000 high school students.