'Vicky Donor' new Bollywood sperm donation film now showing

Sperm Donor India: Vicky Donor a new Bollywood sperm donation film is now showing across the UK. Talking about sex is still a cultural taboo in conservative India, but a Bollywood filmmaker is hoping to usher in change with a light-hearted take on infertility and sperm donation. 'Vicky Donor', a romantic comedy about a sought-after sperm donor at a fertility clinic, is part of a wave of recent films tackling subjects rarely addressed in Indian cinema - gay relationships, biopics on sex symbols and now sperm donation. Indian audiences, torn between rigid social mores and the challenges of a rapidly modernising nation, have gradually accepted Bollywood films with bolder themes. But sperm donation may be pushing the limits. "Conservative families, how they will react, I don't know," said the film's director, Shoojit Sircar. "Things may change. There are chances that youngsters may tell their parents to go and watch the film." In January, a couple's advertisement offering 20,000 rupees for the sperm of an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumnus sparked an online furore. Sircar, whose 2005 film 'Yahaan' was a love story set in Kashmir, said he steered clear of adult jokes for 'Vicky Donor'. Vicky is the name of the main character. "Sperm donation could become a little repulsive if not presented right because it is a taboo and sperm donation straight away relates to masturbation," the 43-year-old film-maker told Reuters in a phone interview from Mumbai. "The treatment is quite humorous, a very Woody Allen-ish style of humour." Much of the dialogue in 'Vicky Donor' is sourced from real-life anecdotes, with the filmmakers taking inspiration from the doctors and patients they met while researching the movie. The trailer depicts a childless couple seeking a cricketer's sperm sample so that their offspring could play for the country and also make a lot of money. "This is a subject that we talk only in our bedrooms but infertility is a huge problem in this modern society," said Sircar. Despite marketing gimmicks such as men dressed in sperm suits dancing at the film's music launch earlier this month, the makers of 'Vicky Donor' may find it difficult to counter the stigma attached to sperm donation. No mainstream Bollywood star, with the exception of its producer, John Abraham, features in Sircar's film. The director says he didn't even bother asking the Indian film industry's reigning heroes. "Any star would have liked the script but they wouldn't have agreed to be a part of the film, I knew that," said Sircar. Instead, newcomer Ayushmann Khurrana, a known face on Indian television who donated sperm as part of a reality TV show task, was cast in the lead role. "Sperm donation is something not generally discussed openly, at least no one knows about the lives of professional sperm donors in India," said film critic Utpal Borpujari. "If this film is able to give a perspective to the whole thing -- even if in a comic way -- the director will deserve kudos for bringing an important issue out in the open." Vicky donor is screening now across the UK, including at Vue Cinema Birmingham, Odeon Cinema Trafford centre Manchester, Glasgow and Leeds-Bradford, also see it at Cineworlds across London Article: www.ibnlive.in.com 24th April 2012

JoEllen Marsh spoke on ‘This Morning’ about her search for her father, a Sperm Donor

Twenty-year-old JoEllen Marsh was desperate to find her real father - a sperm donor. Little did she know when she set out on her quest that she'd also find 14 siblings fathered by Donor 150.
This extraordinary story has been made into new documentary Donor Unknown: Adventures in the Sperm Trade, and JoEllen is tells her story today about her fascinating discovery.

View the clip on 'This Morning' at www.thismorning.itv.com

The film Donor Unknown (cert 12A) is in cinemas early June, and will be screening in London, Glasgow, York, Bath, Oxford, Uckfield, Bradford and other towns across the UK.

Below is a list of screenings:

Friday June 3rd – PREMIERE – Apollo Piccadilly Circus, London at 6.45pm
Sunday June 5th - Gate Cinema, Notting Hill at 8.45pm
Tuesday June 7th - Apollo, Stroud at 8.30pm
Thursday June 9th - Glasgow Film Theatre as part of the Glasgow Science Festival at 6pm
Monday June 13th - The Phoenix, Finchley at 9pm
Tuesday June 14th - City Screen Picturehouse, York at 8.30pm
Wednesday June 15th - The Little Theatre Cinema, Bath at 6.30pm
Thursday June 16th – Phoenix Picturehouse, Oxford at 6.30pm
Sunday June 19th – The Picture House, Uckfield, 6pm and 8pm
Monday June 20th – Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton at 9pm
Wednesday June 22nd - Apollo, Torbay at 8.30pm
Thursday June 23rd – The Lexi Cinema, Kensal Rise at 6.30pm
Sunday June 26th - Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge at 4pm
Tuesday September 13th – British Science Festival, Bradford at 6pm


For more information about bookings visit www.donorunknown.com/uk-screenings

Read more about known donor conception at www.prideangel.com

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Donor Unknown: Adventures in the Sperm Trade

Donor Unknown... a film about identity, genetic inheritance and the family of the future
JoEllen Marsh's life began 22 years ago in a pornography-lined, "collection" cubicle at the Los Angeles headquarters of California Cryobank, a private semen cryopreservation organisation. From there, the sample produced by her biological father, donor 150, was sent to Pennsylvania, where nine months later JoEllen was born to her biological mother, Lucinda Marsh.

Twenty years later, a remarkably accepting JoEllen is calmly recounting the story of how her innate desire to connect with her extended donor family has evolved into the subject of an absorbing documentary. Donor Unknown: Adventures in the Sperm Trade, is a compelling film that raises intriguing questions about nature versus nurture, modern medicine's evolving ethics and the shifting composition of contemporary families.

"Even when I was very young," says JoEllen, "I realised that my family wasn't like other families." Informed by her lesbian mothers from an early age that "a kind man they didn't know" had helped her to be born, the concept of a traditional father – or rather the lack of one – simply never arose.

"My upbringing seemed completely normal to me, as it was all I knew," says JoEllen, who grew up with a younger sister, Mollie, 16, born to the same mother but conceived from a different sperm donor.

But JoEllen had a lot of questions that couldn't be answered. "The way I moved was not like the rest of my family. And if you don't know who your father is, you wonder about the strangest things – what are his ears like? What is his forehead like? Why do I have these interests when no one else in my family does?"

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Jennifer Aniston says 'women no longer need a man in order to have a child.'

In her latest film, The Switch, the 41-year-old actress plays a single woman who uses a sperm donor to get pregnant.
"Women are realising it more and more - knowing that they don't have to settle with a man just to have that child," Aniston said.

"Times have changed and what is amazing is that we do have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents' days when you can't have children because you have waited too long.

"The point of the movie is: what is it that defines a family? It isn't necessarily the traditional mother, father, two children and a dog named Spot.

"Love is love and family is what is around you and who is in your immediate sphere. That is what I love about this movie. It is saying it is not the traditional sort of stereotype of what we have been taught as a society of what family is."

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Jennifer Aniston: searches for a sperm donor in her new movie 'The Switch'

Jennifer Aniston plays a wannabe mother who undergoes artificial insemination, using what she believes is the perfect donor's sperm, to get pregnant.
And when it comes to off screen it seems Aniston would allow life to imitate art, insisting that if she ever went that route she too would definitely 'wanna know the guy'.

Aniston revealed her preference during an appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, in Los Angeles.

In The Switch, Aniston plays singleton Kassie who is desperate to have a baby. Ignoring the objections of her best friend, Wally (played by Jason Bateman) she decides to go it alone.

Kassie chooses a handsome and charming donor but before she can complete the act of insemination, unbeknown to her, a drunk Wally swaps the sperm for his own.

The switch isn’t discovered until seven years later when he finally meets her precocious, though slightly neurotic, son.

Aniston has talked about her desire to be a mother one day, telling Entertainment Weekly 'I'm on the verge of it in some way...it's something I long for.'

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