Inside out: Arthur Dong gets to know gay-bashers.

• Author: Blanchard, Bob
• Position: Director of film 'Licensed to Kill' - Interview

Twenty years ago, documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong was attacked on the streets of San Francisco by gay-bashers. He narrowly escaped, and his attackers sought out another target -- a priest they found around the corner, whom they bludgeoned so severely that he suffered massive head injuries.

Dong became a student of the culture of hate crime, obsessed with the subject. The walls of his San Francisco office are lined with shelves of books and files of tattered newspaper clippings documenting case histories.

But in all his years of research, Dong found almost no studies on the perpetrators of anti-gay violence. Invariably, published material on the subject focuses on the victims' point of view.

Dong decided to make Licensed to Kill, a tough-minded film that explores the complex nature of hate crime and homophobia in America, to try to understand the gay-basher's point of view. The film is full of fascinating and disturbing interviews with convicted murderers of gay men. In their own words, six murderers -- some remorseful and some not -- explain in harrowing detail why they chose to kill another human being because of their feelings about homosexuality.

At forty-three, Dong has already won a Peabody Award, and he's been nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy. In January, at the Sundance Film Festival, Licensed to Kill won two major awards: the Filmmaker's Trophy for Best Documentary and the Best Documentary Director Award.

All my films focus on social and cultural issues as played out through individual lives," says Dong. That's always driven my work because that's how I learn best about issues, that's how I learn best about humanity: the human spirit and the human struggle."

Dong wrote, directed, and edited Licensed to Kill, and he is arranging a series of national screenings throughout the year.

According to the most recent survey by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, violent attacks against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people continue to increase. The national numbers are driven by huge surges in reported incidents in Los Angeles (55 percent), Virginia (206 percent), Detroit (29 percent), and Cleveland (64 percent). In the last three years, the United States documented more than 200 murders of gay men, where the judge cited homophobia as a major factor.

"Licensed to Kill is really about heterosexual institutions in this country," says Dong, "specifically those that perpetuate anti-gay violence. What I've created...