Meema Spadola
photo credit: Isa Brito
Meema Spadola is an award-winning producer, director and writer of documentary films and radio. She grew up in rural Maine, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her parents were married until she was ten years old, when her mother came out as a lesbian. Meema began working in documentary film in 1988 during breaks from her studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.
Meema's previous work includes Breasts: A Documentary, an hour-long independent film which featured twenty-two women and girls from age six to 84-years-old talking about how their breasts have affected their experiences of puberty, sex, motherhood, health and aging. The film was the highest rated documentary in Cinemax's history and is now available from HBO Home Video. Deborah Tannen (author of You Just Don't Understand) praised Breasts as "a film that changes the way you look at the world and yourself." It has gone on to receive a Gold World Medal at the New York Festivals 1997 and a Director's Citation from The Black Maria Video and Film Festival.
Breasts: A
Documentary
photo credit: Carolina Zorrilla de San Martin
Meema's book Breasts: Our Most Public Private Parts, a continuation of the dialogue begun in Breasts: A Documentary, is now available from Wildcat Canyon Press. The New York Daily News praised it as "The Breast Bible" and the L.A. Times praised the book's "humor and dignity."
In 1992, Meema made My Mother's Secret, a short no-budget video documentary about children of lesbian moms. The video played in gay and lesbian film festivals all over the United States in cities like New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and worldwide as far away as Hong Kong.
Meema and her mother from the video,
"My Mother's Secret"
photo credit: John Walter
Meema has also produced a number of radio documentaries for the Peabody Award- winning public radio program, This American Life, including a story about her back-to-the-land childhood in rural Maine.
In addition, Meema has worked as an associate producer, assistant editor and researcher for a number of programs for the Fox cable channel, PBS and The Discovery Channel.