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The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Directors

Nicole Newnham

Executive Producers

Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman, Elizabeth Fischer, Liz Cole, Noah Oppenheim, Andy Berg, Dakota Johnson, Ro Donnelly

Producers

Nicole Newnham, Molly O'Brien, R.J. Cutler, Elise Pearlstein, Kimberley Ferdinando, Trevor Smith

Editors

Eileen Meyer

Cinematographers

Rose Bush

The Hite Report, a groundbreaking study of the intimate experiences of women, remains one of the bestselling books of all time since its publication in 1976. Drawn from anonymous survey responses, the book challenged restrictive conceptions of sex and opened a dialogue in popular culture around women’s pleasure. Its charismatic author, Shere Hite, a feminist sex researcher and former model, became the public messenger of women’s secret confessions. With each subsequent bestseller, she engaged television titans in unforgettably explicit debates about sexuality while suffering the backlash her controversial findings provoked. But few remember Shere Hite today. What led to her erasure?

 

Digging into exclusive archives, as well as Hite’s personal journals and the original survey responses, filmmaker Nicole Newnham (Crip Camp, 2021 Best Feature Documentary Oscar® Nominee, Audience Award Winner: U.S. Documentary, 2020 Sundance Film Festival) transports viewers back to a time of great societal transformation around sexuality. Her revelatory portrait is a rediscovery of a pioneer who has had an unmistakable influence on current conversations about gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy, as well as a timely, cautionary tale of what too often happens to women who dare speak out.

 

Courtesy of NBC News Studios

Nicole Newnham By Kate T Parker

Nicole Newnham

Director, The Disappearance Of Shere Hite

Nicole Newnham is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary producer and director, four-time Sundance Film Festival alumnus, and six-time Emmy nominee. She co-directed and produced the 2021 Academy Award-nominated documentary Crip Camp with Jim LeBrecht.

 

The film won the Sundance Audience Award, the IDA Best Feature Documentary Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature, and most recently, a Peabody. Nicole has produced two virtual reality films with artist/director Lynette Wallworth that have each won an Emmy for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary: the breakthrough VR work, Collisions (2017) and Awavena (2019). Both films premiered at Sundance New Frontiers and were featured in installation form at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

 

Nicole’s other acclaimed documentaries include the Emmy-nominated films The Revolutionary Optimists, Sentenced Home, and The Rape of Europa. Recently, she co-directed the landmark ESPN series about the history of Title IX, 37 Words with acclaimed filmmaker Dawn Porter.

 

A graduate of Oberlin College and Stanford University’s documentary film graduate program, Nicole lives in Berkeley, CA with her husband, Tom Malarkey, and sons Finn and Blaine.