Farewell film focuses on living, not death
Debra Chasnoff documented her own cancer battle in ‘Prognosis’
In 2015, Academy Awardwinning director Debra Chasnoff made an interesting decision when she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer: She decided she didn’t want to know how much time she had left.
Instead, she just wanted to live. During whatever time she had left. Of course, as was in the San Francisco filmmaker’s DNA, she picked up a camera to document it.
“Prognosis: Notes on Living,” completed by Chasnoff’s friends and family after her 2017 death, is, as the title implies, about life, even as death is everpresent. It doesn’t mourn so much as live in the moment.
This year, the film makes its world premiere online at the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, a.k.a. Frameline 45, with a special free live streaming event at 4 p.m. Saturday, June 19. The screening will be followed by a live conversation with Chasnoff’s codirector and coproducer, Kate Stilley Steiner, one of the founders of Citizen Film; widow and producer Nancy Otto; and other members of the filmmaking team. The event will be replayed, also for free, at 4 p.m. June 26.
“I honestly don’t think she lived that much differently after the diagnosis,” said Otto, during a recent interview with The Chronicle at Stilley Steiner’s San Francisco apartment. “I think that’s what’s tricky about these things. When you get a serious diagnosis, you think your time is short and that’s it. But every day, every minute, you’re living, and you’re doing that until your final breath, and you have to figure out how to have quality of life in all of that.
“For us that meant finding a lot of joy — finding things that made us happy by going in nature. And she loved her work, and she continued to work as much as she could. It’s not like she had a bucket list where she wanted to check off all these things. That did not happen.”
Although they did get to Portugal and Pompeii.
“Prognosis” is a mere 79 minutes, but it packs in a lot. Chas, as Chasnoff was known, had a full life. We meet her two sons, Oscar, who lives in New York, and Noah, who lives in the Bay Area. We get to know Nancy, as well as a group of friends.
There is also a recap of Chasnoff’s filmmaking career, which includes an Oscar for her 1991 short film “Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment” and an influential 1996 documentary “It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School,” which became a teaching tool in school around the country.
But despite a career of socially conscious films, “Prognosis” doesn’t crusade for cancer research, nor is it an exposé of the medical establishment (Otto said both believed Chas received excellent medical care; her visits to the doctor were filmed with permission). The film is simply, as the subtitle says, “Notes on Living.”
“When she got sick, she asked all of her filmmaking friends to help make the film,” said Stilley Steiner, a longtime Chasnoff collaborator. “She would get an appointment with a doctor and she would text and someone would say, ‘OK, I’m available!’ This was very free form . ... When she passed away, we opened up this treasure chest of 200 hours of footage.”
Also helping finish the film were executive producer Carrie Lozano, coproducers Joan Lefkowitz and Lidia Szajko, and editor Mike Shen.
Like many Chasnoff films, “Prognosis” seems destined to become a teaching tool. Stilley Steiner and Otto are using the world premiere as a launch point to work with organizations serving older adults such as SAGE, which advocates for LGBTQ+ elders, and INELDA, the International End of Life Doula Association.
Stilley Steiner called it a “vintage Debra Chasnoff public education, public engagement” campaign, noting that “there’s a boom in people and organizations wanting to talk about death and dying — mortality issues — right now.”
Added Otto: “Especially postpandemic, people are way more open to that.”
Otto, who has spent a career working with nonprofits, including the ACLU Northern California, moved to Bodega Bay in the months after her wife’s death, leaving the Noe Valley house in which Chas died (her death, with a dozen friends or so keeping vigil, is an especially poignant sequence in “Prognosis”).
Completing the film has been therapeutic and has helped her adjust to her new life.
“I was craving nature,” Otto said. “After Chas died, I would hike and hike and hike, and it became harder and harder to live in the city. There were so many distractions. My grieving required me being kind of very, very quiet. Just being in nature was so good for my soul. What this taught me is that life is short and I don’t know how much time I have here. What does my soul want? And it really wanted to look at the ocean every day.”
Asked what were Chasnoff’s strengths as a person and as a filmmaker, Otto said, “Her heart. She was a truly openhearted person. She wasn’t one to really react with anger. She would laugh and keep her heart very soft. … Nothing really fazed her too much in life.”