The premier screening of Creating A Place at the Table, a documentary about lesbian families and culture, is taking place at The Center on Saturday, Nov. 8. The one-hour documentary is produced and directed by Becky Burklee and Kathy Hines of Sun & Moon Vision Productions, a San Diego-based nonprofit documentary and media arts organization. The executive producer is Leng Loh, a colleague who produces shows for public television.

Creating a Place at the Table chronicles three families with three different cultural backgrounds and three different experiences; the common thread between them is that a lesbian couple heads each family. The light-hearted documentary explores their stories of coming-out to their families, the strengths they bring from their individual cultural backgrounds, and the process of creating their own families.

“We noticed that a lot people our age were coming out and being either totally cut off from their families, or they were cutting themselves off,” said Burklee. “We wanted to explore people who have come out without doing that; [people] who have been able to keep their family ties and their culture, and how that all works.”

The filmmakers did not know the couples before the start of the documentary. Burklee had met Luisa and Stephanie previously, but all couples and subject matter were chosen through a community advisory board.

Burklee and Hines co-founded Sun & Moon Vision Productions in 1999, along with two other board members who remained with the company for two years. Their mission is to provide full multimedia production services for businesses, as well as for community, arts and culture programs, to educate people about human and environmental exploitation through media, and advocate for underrepresented media artists, such as women, youth and minorities.

Along with creating short media narratives and educational films for social work and humanitarian organizations, the company produced YOUTH OUTLOUD!, a documentary profiling GLBT high school age teens, in 2000. The documentary was extremely successful, and has been translated into six languages. Burklee and Hines are presently gathering information for a new documentary about the child welfare system, and are seeing an increase in their ability to support other filmmakers.

“One of the visions of Sun & Moon Vision Productions is to support women in film,” said Burklee. “One of the things we were able to do this year was become a sponsor for another project about women of Islam, produced by a local filmmaker. We would like to be able to work with more female producers and help them by being sponsors. We’d also like to be able to produce more projects both in documentary and narrative [formats].”

Creating A Place at the Table is funded in part by the Lesbian & Gay Funding Partnership of the San Diego Foundation for Change, as well as the San Diego Foundation for Change, the San Diego Human Dignity Foundation and the Social Visionary donors of Sun & Moon Vision Productions. The premiere is sponsored in part by The Center.

The documentary screens at 4:00 p.m. on Nov. 8 and will be followed by a Q&A panel discussion with some of the families and filmmakers. There will be a potluck and kids’ activities from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for students and $5 for students. Call (760) 735-8300 for more information.