The above video is a trailer for the documentary Training Rules which examines how “women’s collegiate sports, caught in a web of homophobic practices, collude in the destruction of the lives and dreams of many of its most talented athletes.”
The film goes through the life of Jen Harris, a basketball star recruited since she was in the 5th grade by Penn State. After signing on to play at Penn, she then learned of Coach Rene Portland’s rules: no drugs, no drinking and no lesbians. Yea, you read it right.
Portland used tactics that were deemed “intimidating, hostile and offensive” against Jennifer when she was a Lady Lion, and eventually Harris was dismissed from the team - ruining the career of one of the top athletes in the nation. Jennifer’s story as well as those of six other women who were victimized through the years are told in this film.
Having played basketball myself in school, it’s so difficult to imagine having to deny a part of yourself to do something you love. And to have your career cut short because of someone else’s bigotry? Wackness. Have any of you guys experienced discrimination based on your sexual orientation by coaches in the sports arena?
(via blaktivist)
OUTRAGE: delivers a searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to. “Outrage” boldly reveals the hidden lives of some of our nation’s most powerful policymakers, details the harm they’ve inflicted on millions of Americans, and examines the media’s complicity in keeping their secrets. (www.outragethemovie.com)
With white Jewish lesbians for parents and two adopted brothers — one mixed-race and one Korean—Brooklyn teen Avery grew up in a unique and loving household. But when her curiosity about her African-American roots grows, she decides to contact her birth mother. This choice propels Avery into her own complicated exploration of race, identity, and family that threatens to distance her from the parents she’s always known. She begins staying away from home, starts skipping school, and risks losing her shot at the college track career she had always dreamed of. But when Avery decides to pick up the pieces of her life and make sense of her identity, the results are inspiring. OFF AND RUNNING follows Avery to the brink of adulthood, exploring the strength of family bonds and the lengths people must go to become themselves.
Trailer for the documentary film “Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement,” a true love story about two New York women whose relationship spans over four decades.
Queer Farmer Film Project! A film narrated by queer farmer Jonah, filmed by Sammy Lyons, about connecting queer farmers.
If you’re in the US, it’s showing November 6th at the San Francisco Trans Film Festival, plus if you’re an agrarian queer you could get in touch with them cos the project is ongoing. From their blog:
“We seek self identified queer farmers anywhere along the LGBTQI spectrums- and specifically: people of color, older folks, those from many generations of farmers, CSA farmers, urban farmers, queer/feminist/faerie farmers living and working on land projects or in intentional communities, transpeople, genderqueers, and intersex farmers, those living in the Midwest or South, femmes, farmer teachers, and all others with dirt under their nails who are fabulous.”
I find the whole minorities taking to farming, or becoming visible if you were always agrarian, both really exciting and kind of daunting.
My family were agrarian labourers who moved urban due to rural economic collapse during my childhood, and there are qualities I value about both that heritage and the urban alternative.
Self-sustaining communities can be idyllic and/or really isolating for queers and independent women. Contemporary gay and feminist identities do owe some debt to the emergence of city dwelling, if only for the related lifestyles premised upon urban access to concentrated cultural capital and social mobility which facilitated sex radicals experimentation with social roles beyond economic dependence on traditional families.
OTOH, I’m a queer city farmer and I love projects linking minorities and queers and linking people to ways that their social politics and transition to sustainable living is doable. In summary: I wanna see this doco!
this is so exciting!!!
Trailer for the Documentary “Boy I Am”
A preview screening of the feature-length documentary RIOT ACTS:
Flaunting Gender Deviance in Music Performance
Sunday September 6th @
Glasslands
289 Kent Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Screening begins at 7pm, followed by a brief Q&A.
Performances begin at 9:30, featuring Novice Theory (Brooklyn) and The
Degenerettes (Baltimore). The filmmakers will be in attendance.
RIOT ACTS is a transfabulous rockumentary representing the whole lives
of transgender and gender variant musicians, though a first-hand
perspective of the intersections between gender performance and stage
performance. This feature-length documentary highlights issues crucial
to interviewees such as songwriting, voice presentation, presenting a
body/bodies on stage, audiences, venues, the idea of the spectacle,
media representation, performing gender and notions about “drag,” and
the personal as political. The film culminates with the notions that
identities and bodies are undeniably political, and that the trans
experience isn’t always one of tragedy, but one of creativity and joy.
2009
Directed by Madsen Minax
Produced by Actor Slash Model
Running Time: 1 hour 12 minutes
Featuring
The Cliks
Coyote Grace
Jessica Xavier
The Shondes
Novice Theory
Systyr Act
The Degenerettes
Adhamh Roland
Ryka Aoki De La Cruz
Lipstick Conspiracy
Trannysaurus Sex
Katastrophe
Basic Fix
Piper McKenzie
Venus Demars
Tough Tough Skin


















