About the Documentary

Frozen Angels investigates the future as it exists today in Los Angeles. Following a cast of bigger-than-life, often funny, characters, the viewer encounters wealthy sperm bank presidents, expectant surrogate mothers, gene researchers, radio talk show hosts, NASA scientists, infertile suburban couples, just-born and now-adult designer babies, blonde, blue-eyed egg donors, and feminist lawyers. The film warns of the coming dangers this brave new world poses to race relations, dividing society into genetic haves and have-nots. Two scientists at work in a laboratory, wearing lab coats and facing each other, amidst a table filled with test tubes and machines

The Sundance Film Festival describes Frozen Angels as “a mesmerizing work that is not so much a science film as a startling conduit into the future of the American Dream, where ‘perfect children’ can be added to the shopping list.” The film makes the connection between individual desire and a society that would seek to design its children. It takes a rollercoaster ride through Los Angeles, a city better known for freeways, film sets of epic proportions, silicone implants, Governor Schwarzenegger, Muscle Beach, and Disneyland … for elevating the superficial to an art. But in the Mecca of the “Body Perfect,” one in six couples are now infertile and Angelinos lead the world in the number of fertility clinics per capita. With no government regulation to restrict them, L.A. is home to the world’s largest egg donor agency, largest sperm bank, and largest surrogate mother agency. Nearly all these businesses’ customers are wealthy, and almost all are white.

With the potential to screen for more than 2,000 genetic diseases coming on line in the very near future, who would risk having imperfect children the old-fashioned way? And what corporation would insure them?

Frozen Angels is a highly visual and stylized film, often more reminiscent of fiction or a science fiction film than documentary: the fluid camera is almost always in motion on a steadicam, in automobiles or helicopters. With no narration, the characters tell their own conflicting stories; viewers are asked to contemplate their own thoughts about the coming of the new eugenics and the world we will leave for the children being created. No one’s moral code is left unchallenged.

The Filmmakers

Eric Black
Eric Black lives in San Francisco. He attended elementary school in Ohio and in Florence, Italy and high school in West Berlin. He bought his first camera, a Pentacon, in East Berlin when he was 14, and some of his first photographs were taken there. He graduated with degrees in photography, anthropology and political economy at the University of California with honors and the Chancellor’s Award for Art. He studied in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University. The first film he shot, which was in black and white, won the Student Academy Award for California. He has shot many documentaries since and worked twice as assistant director with the American director Jon Jost in Rome. In 1998 he was awarded a stipendium at the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Frauke Sandig
Frauke Sandig was born in West Germany and moved to Berlin one year before the fall of the Wall. Since then, she has worked as a television producer (RIAS, Deutsche Welle) and as the director of more than 20 documentaries including In the Same Boat, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, The Man Who Fell From Germany, George Tabori–The Great Old Man of the Theatre, Krakow–Stories of a City and others. Her recent film, Oskar & Jack, told the story of twins who were separated at birth and grew up in completely different worlds: one as a Jew, the other as a Nazi. The film was screened at numerous international film festivals and was shown on public television around the world. Currently she is working on a documentary series about immigrants before and after coming to Germany.

Silke Botsch
Silke Botsch has been a film editor in both Germany and the U.S. for the past 12 years. She has worked alongside directors, including Veit Helmer and M. X. Oberg, and at various production firms, including Pro-Kino, X-Filme, Pandora Film, Neue Sentimental Film, Radical Media, TriggerHappyProductions (Ralf Schmerberg), Miramax and das Werk. Among her credits is the 1999 feature Angel Express with director Rolf-Peter Kahl, and the 2003 film Gate to Heaven with director Veit Helmer. Botsch is a guest lecturer at the Bauhaus-University Weimar.

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