Creation Identity - Sperm, Egg and Embryo Donation - Dramas
Blade Runner (1982)
Director: Ridley Scott
Country of origin and year: USA, 1982
Starring: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer
L.A. circa 2019 has become a pan-cultural dystopia of corporate advertising, pollution and flying automobiles, as well as replicants, human-like androids with short life spans built by the Tyrell Corporation for use in dangerous off-world colonization. Rick Deckard, a retired cop, was a talented blade runner, a euphemism for detectives that hunt down and assassinate rogue replicants. Called before his one-time superior, Deckard is forced back into active duty because a quartet of replicants led by Roy Batty has escaped and headed to Earth, killing several humans in the process. Deckard tracks Batty to sabotage his plans to murder the head of the Tyrell foundation and a bloody and violent final confrontation between Deckard and Batty takes place on a skyscraper rooftop high above the city.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/
Frankenstein (1931)
Director: James Whale
Country of origin and year: USA, 1931
Starring: Colin Clive, Mae Clark and Boris Karloff
This horror film follows the obsessed scientist Dr. Henry Frankenstein as he attempts to create life by assembling a creature from body parts of the deceased. Aided by his loyal misshapen assistant, Fritz, Frankenstein succeeds in animating his monster. But, confused and traumatized, it escapes into the countryside and begins to wreak havoc. Frankenstein searches for the elusive being, and eventually must confront his tormented creation.
Internet Movie Database webpage:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021884/
Frankenstein
Director: James Ormerod
Country of origin and year: USA, 1984
Starring: Robert Powell, Carrie Fisher, David Warner and Sir John Geilgud
Dr. Frankenstein's synthetic monster speaks, aspires to intellectual achievements, and begins descending into insanity and murder against its will. As in the Shelley original, both Dr. Frankenstein and his creation are left to die on an arctic ice flow, a fitting punishment for dabbling in God's domain.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087288/
Frankenstein (Made for TV)
Director: Jed Mercurio
Country of origin and year: UK, 2007
Starring: Helen McCrory
Dr Victor Frankenstein, is re-born in the 21st century as a female biologist. As Dr Victoria Frankenstein sits by the hospital bed of her dying son, William, doctors tell her to prepare for the worst. Frankenstein is a scientist conducting highly controversial work in the field of stem cell research and biotechnology. She is convinced that her latest programme, the Universal Xenograft Project, is her son’s last chance for survival so Victoria secretly takes a sample of his blood and incorporates it into the programme.
In the confines of a purpose-built tank, the cells diversify, mutate and re-form at an alarming rate. X-rays of the internal activity reveal a large mass of organs and tissue, and as Victoria looks into the tank, an eye opens. She realises with horror that she is no longer in control of the experiment. The UX is breeding its own bio-organism and… it’s alive. Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020766/
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Country of origin and year: USA, UK, 1994
Starring: Robert De Niro, Kenneth Branagh, Helena Bonham Carter
As Viktor Frankenstein is dying he shares a tale of gruesome terror with a sea captain. Viktor was a brilliant student who used previous experiments by a successful scientist to bring a creature assembled from body parts back to life. He soon realises that his experiment was a mistake and he abandons the creature, expecting it to die alone. However, the creature survives seeks revenge on Viktor.
Blade Runner 2049
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Country of origin and year: US, 2017
Starring: Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas
Thirty years after the events of Blade Runner (1982), a new Blade Runner, L.A.P.D. Officer "K", unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former L.A.P.D. Blade Runner, who has been missing for thirty years.
Pinocchio
Director: Norman Ferguson, T. Hee
Country of origin and year: US, 1940
Starring: Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Mel Blanc
Inventor Gepetto creates a wooden marionette called Pinocchio. His wish for Pinocchio to be a real boy is unexpectedly granted by a fairy. The fairy assigns Jiminy Cricket to act as Pinocchio's "conscience" and keep him out of trouble. Jiminy is not too successful in this endeavor and most of the film is spent with Pinocchio deep in trouble.
Made in America
Director: Richard Benjamin
Country of origin and year: USA,1993
Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson
Sarah Matthews runs an African American oriented bookstore in Oakland. She is raising her daughter, a beautiful high school student named Zora, on her own after her husband's death many years earlier. As a result of a science class blood test, Zora discovers that the man she thought was her father is actually not her biological father. Instead Zora finds she was the result of artificial insemination. After researching the sperm bank's records, Zora discovers, much to the surprise of Sarah and herself, that the anonymous sperm donor is in fact, Hal Jackson, a loud, crude obnoxious (and white) used-car dealer who advertises on late-night television. Zora visits Hal while he is filming a commercial and Hal brushes her off. Enraged, Sarah tells Hal off, but after meeting Zora he now feels a paternal itch. Not only that, but he is beginning to feel an attraction to Sarah.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107478/
Secrets & Lies
Director: Mike Leigh
Country of origin and year: UK/France, 1996
Starring: Brenda Blethyn, Claire Rushbrook, Timothy Spall, Phyllis Logan, Marianne Jean-Baptiste
A family is forced to confront the personal issues they've been avoiding for years in this powerful, realistic drama. Cynthia is a working-class British woman whose life has been a long series of painful disappointments. She is single with no romantic prospects and a dead-end job at a box factory. One day, Cynthia receives a phone call from a woman named Hortense, who claims to be the daughter Cynthia put up for adoption years ago. Although Cynthia initially reacts with panic, but she agrees to meet Hortense and they quickly form a friendship that gives Cynthia a new source of emotional strength. However, when Cynthia decides to introduce the family to her new "friend," it forces them to confront the lies and evasions that have kept them apart all these years.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117589/
All About My Mother
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Country of origin and year: Spain, 1999
Starring: Cecilia Roth
The night a car runs over her son Esteban, Manuela cries until her eyes run completely dry. That same night, while waiting in the hospital, she reads the last lines written by her son in a notebook that he always kept by his side and discovers that he felt there was a part of himself missing because he did not know his father. In memory of her son, Manuela goes to Barcelona in search of him. She wants to tell him that their son's last written words were directed to him, even though he never knew his father. But first she has to tell him that, when she abandoned him eighteen years ago, she was pregnant, they had a son, and he has just died. Her search is not an easy task.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185125/
All About Me (Made for TV)
Director: Beryl Richards
Country of origin and year: UK, 2007
Starring: Ben Bishop, Juliet Ellis, Vera Graziadei
Elliott Conroy, 19, is on the edge of a new life as he waits for the exam grades to go to university. His parents, Helen and Tony, have always been rock solid - but now there are tensions between them, raised voices and painful silences. Elliott's accidental discovery that Helen has a degenerative illness, opens up a series of painful revelations which challenge Elliott's sense of his own identity and fractures the family. This film explores donor insemination, genetic inheritance and the damage of secrets and lies.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0987902/
My Sister’s Keeper
Director: Nick Cassavettes
Country of origin and year: USA, 2009
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric
Two parents have just been informed that their young daughter Kate has leukemia, and that she only has a few years to live. The doctor suggests to the parents that they try for a saviour sibling child, whereby a number of embryos are created through IVF and then selected so a resulting child maybe become a immunological perfect match to an elder sibling. When born (a daughter) the umbilical cord of this saviour child is used initially. As years go on, however, the doctors must take bone marrow from this small girl to attempt to treat Kate. Eventually At age 11, the daughter has had enough of all of these medical procedures, and she decides to sue her parents for medical emancipation and the right to decide how her body will be used. The whole family is being torn apart by the decision because everyone knows what will happen to Kate if she does not get a new kidney.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1078588/
Mistaken Identity (Also known as: Switched at Birth)
Director: Douglas Barr
Country of origin and year: USA, 1999
Starring: Melissa Gilbert
On the same night, Milford maternity delivers Morgan, the son of businessman James and Sarah, and Luke, the son of Linda, whose partner Darryl Moncton has abandoned them. Darryl, determined that he never wanted children, leaves Linda and Luke to live with Linda’s parents. Prior to being discharged from hospital, however, a ward nurse unwittingly switches the babies' name tags. Two years later, Darryl returns but denies paternity. He accepts a DNA test if Linda will promise to leave his life, but the test reveals that neither is Luke's biological parent. What must happen now?
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212543/
The Refuge (original title: Le Refuge)
Director: Francois Ozon
Country of origin and year: France, 2009
Starring: Isabelle Carré, Louis-Ronan Choisy and Pierre Louis-Calixte
Mousse and Louis are young, beautiful, rich and in love, but drugs have invaded their lives. One day, they overdose and Louis dies. Mousse survives, but soon learns she's pregnant. Feeling lost, she runs away to a house far from Paris. Several months later, Louis' brother, who is gay, joins her in her refuge. Mousse continues to consume both drugs and alcohol unashamedly during her pregnancy and falls in love with Louis’ brother much to her frustration.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504429/
The Switch
Director: Josh Gordon and Will Speck
Country of origin and year: USA, 2010
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman
Kassie and Wally are best friends. Being unlucky in love, Kassie has decided to have a child using artificial insemination. Wally does not like this idea, but he is not capable of admitting to himself, let alone to Kassie, that he is in love with her. At Kassie's artificial insemination party, Wally gets very drunk and spies the sperm donor's sample in the bathroom. He replaces the sample with one of his own. Wally is way too drunk to know what he did that night, and Kassie has moved away to raise her child. Now 7 years later, Kassie has moved back with her son Sebastian, and Wally cannot help but notice the many striking similarities that he and Sebastian share.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0889573/
The Back-Up Plan
Director: Alan Poul
Country of origin and year: USA, 2010
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Alex O'Loughlin and Michaela Watkins
Zoe is a woman who has a hard time letting anyone into her life: She has a habit of pushing people away when they get close. However, she desperately wants to have a baby, and because she has no man in her life, she decides to be artificially inseminated. Shortly after having the procedure she meets a man named Stan whom she connects with. She agonizes over whether she should tell him about the pregnancy, fearing that he will leave when he finds out.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212436/
The Kids Are All Right
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Country of origin and year: USA, 2010
Starring: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo
Nic and Jules are in a long term, committed, lesbian relationship which, though loving, is by no means perfect. They have two teen-aged children, Joni and Laser, each of whom is a biological child of one of the women. Joni and Laser are also half-siblings, having the same unknown sperm donor father. The children eventually make contact with their father, the late thirty-something Paul, a co-op farmer and restaurateur. As Paul's relationship with the entire family grows, they have an effect on what he wants in life, and he in turn affects the family dynamic as well as each person's relationships outside of the family.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0842926/
Born with Two Mothers
Director: Ian Duncan and Oliver Morse
Country of origin and year: UK, 2005
Starring: Lesley Sharp, Adam Kotz, Sophie Okonedo
Two childless couples, the Bridges and the Mayfields, eagerly await the results of their attempts at conceiving using IVF. The white couple celebrate when they discover that they are to have a baby, but the black couple continue their struggle as they fail to become pregnant yet again. As the pregnancy progresses, the medical staff at the clinic realise there has been a mistake and the embryo of the black couple has been mistakenly planted into the womb of the white woman. With neither couple wanting to give up "their" child, the legal court is the next step as the experts and lawyers are brought in to help decide which couple the baby should stay with.
Internet Movie Database webpage: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457292/
Il a déjà tes yeux (He Even Has Your Eyes)
Director: Lucien Jean-Baptiste
Country of origin and year: France, 2016
Starring: Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Zabou Breitman
Paul and Sali are a married black couple who are unable to have biological children and have been struggling to adopt a child for a long time. When Sali finally receives the call that their adoption file is approved and that a 4-month-old white baby boy called Benjamin is available, it seems like nothing could go wrong anymore. Except for the fact that Sali's parents do not accept their white grandchild, and that the racist social worker Claire Mallet will do anything at her reach to stop Paul and Sali from adopting Benjamin.