40 Years of Queer
Featuring special guests at every screening, this decade-by-decade LGBTQ cinema showcase has something for everyone — just when we need it most. We kick off with a 40th anniversary screening of Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.’s Buddies (1985), a beautiful gay drama, and the first feature film about AIDS. Representing the 1990s is Cheryl Dunye’s legendary Black lesbian classic, The Watermelon Woman (1996), with Dunye starring as a video store clerk making a movie about a Black actress from the 1930s, and looking for love. In Screaming Queens (2005), co-directors Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman reveal the amazing true story of the pre-Stonewall Tenderloin trans uprising, the historic 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riots. Followed by Jenni Olson’s The Royal Road (2015), her 16mm essay film that mashes together the Mexican American War, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and the failed romantic exploits of a butch dyke in California. Bookending the series we have special presentations of Bressan’s newly restored gay adult feature, Daddy Dearest (1984), and Olson’s 16mm San Francisco landscape essay film, The Joy of Life (2005).
Co-curated by Lex Sloan and Jenni Olson.
Co-Presented by Frameline
