Not your average mogul: producer Jen Chaiken makes acclaimed--films both gay and otherwise--but for her, it's ultimately all about family.

Jien Chaiken is the very model of the modern indie-film producer. Seated at a power desk in her spacious San Francisco office, she describes her latest project, My Flesh and Blood (directed by Jonathan Karsh), the Sundance award-winning documentary about disability that opens in November and is already generating Oscar buzz. Airy and spacious, her office boasts a poster gallery of previous successes (Big Eden, Family Name), an upscale kitchen, and an editing room outfitted with the cutest lipstick-red sofa and chairs you've ever seen. She's 30-something and doing just fine, thank you.

Dig a little deeper, though, and a different woman emerges, one who has deliberately chosen the humane scale and human relationships of her native Bay Area over New York and Los Angeles. "It's not a career choice whatsoever," says Chaiken, "but I think I'm more inspired here, more focused, and can be a more creative person." Rather than chase the latest talent Chaiken gravitates toward people she's known a long time. And she switches between a genres and subjects, pursuing her interests instead of branding a niche. "I have very strong options about what should be out there," say Chaiken, explaining that she chose the sweet small-town comedy Big Eden, "because I was so sick of the films coming out of the gay community then, and this wasn't urban and wasn't full of gorgeous young things."

Chaiken got into film via an old-fashioned apprenticeship, landing in New York fresh out of college, working hard, taking risks. Along the way, she became uncommonly astute about marketing, producing, and the definition of success. "We've sold 70,000 copies of Big Eden [on video]," she reports. It's an amazing record--"Any distributor in oar genre would have been thrilled with numbers haft of that," says Wolfe Video president Maria Lynn--the result not only of the film's valentine-perfect romance and Wolfe Video's marketing but also producer Chaiken's savvy decision to spend the extra money on a two-DVD box with the same variety of interviews and commentaries that mainstream movies routinely offer.

My Flesh and Blood doesn't seem at first to have anything in common with Big Eden. Neither a dramatic film nor a gay-themed one, it's a tough documentary about an unusual mom and her family of 11 adopted children with severe disabilities, boisterous personalities, and ... OK, buckets of charm. "When you get to know people across any level of difference, then walls are broken down," Chaiken avers.

"Difference." Sizing up Chaiken, I mention that both films are about creating family. And for that matter, so is her working style, replete with kinship connections and a sense of community. Chaiken agrees--for her, it's all about family, community, acceptance.

Her life follows the same precepts offscreen. She and her partner, Sam Hamilton, threw themselves a big o1' lesbian wedding on Memorial Day, 2002, bringing more than a hundred people out to a west Texas ranch, forcing a mingling of circles and families, both biological and created. "I like to open it up a little," admits Chaiken, laughing with pleasure over the memory of wranglers querying her guests about being gay. As for family, she and Hamilton are going for it: Hamilton's womb, Chaiken's eggs, and a sperm donor. One wonders what her next producing gig will be.

Rich also writes for The [London] Guardian and is currently at work on a book titled The Rise and Fall of the New Queer Cinema.