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)
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Be Yr Own Queero brings you the best in LGBTQ activism, politics and culture by focusing on the personal stories of queer individuals. We feel that it's important to have strong and supportive queer communities and we are creating those communities where they do not exist. Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments with us. read more
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posted by matildastone
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)
posted by scantronWith 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.
posted by scantron
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.
posted by scantron
Travel Queeries is a feature-length documentary film that examines the culture, art and activism of radical queers in contemporary Europe. Through personal interviews and documentation of performances, festivals, multi-media visual arts and spaces, Travel Queeries puts an exciting international lens on queer fringe culture. With the aim of building bridges and awareness, Travel Queeries considers the word “queer” and explores the complexities, innovative values and spirit of queer within a progressive social change movement.
Travel Queeries was started in 2005 at Queeruption, Barcelona. Filmed in 2006 (UK, Germany, Poland) and in 2007 (Spain, Denmark, Serbia, Italy), production and editing was completed in Seattle (US) and Bremen (Germany). The film premiered in March 2009 in London (UK).
The filmmaker, Elliat Graney-Saucke, has been a long time friend of QZAP, and we’re very excited to bring this to Milwaukee.
******
this film will be playing friday, nov 20 at 7:30 PM in nyc! check it out if you have yr friday night free!
posted by matildastoneQueer 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!!!
posted by matildastone
Trailer for the Documentary “Boy I Am”
posted by matildastone
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
posted by matildastone
Check out this live event happening TONIGHT (April 22nd) from 9-10:30pm (EST). There will be speakers from numerous LGBTQ organizations and other orgs working towards LGBTQ equality. They will all be discussing the power of storytelling and how to make use of web2.0 and other social media tools.
My colleague, Molly, will be on the call talking about how filmmakers are sharing the stories of LGBTQ people. So please check it out!
posted by scantronThis ain’t no Destiny’s Child song. Oh hell no, these girls are real and they mean business. Say My Name is the name of a documentary film that played at Full Frame a few weeks ago all about female rappers and hip hop artists. It was great to see MC Lyte and my fave, Erykah Badu talking about misogyny and sexism in the hip hop industry. The film also interviews openly out, detroit based rapper Invincible, who also works at a bicycle co-op when she’s not spitting rhymes. BAD ASS!
posted by scantronGreetings, Queeros! As some of you may know, the Juggling Gypsy holds the Subversive Film Series every Sunday night at 8pm. It showcases all kinds of films, from narratives to documentaries, avant-garde classics to experimental A-lists to stand-up comedy, and everything in between.
This Sunday night, the 12th, they will be showing “FABULOUS! The Story of Queer Cinema.” It’s a chronological look at films by, for and about gays & lesbians in the United States, spanning from 1947 to 2005. The film groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various other cultures, and then mainstream Hollywood drama. It stars John Waters, Wilson Cruz, Gus Van Sant, Jane Lynch, Alan Cumming, John Cameron Mitchell, Heather Matarrazzo, Marlon Riggs, Ang Lee, and tons of others!
There will also be drink specials, so go check it out!
And if you’re interested, here’s the lineup for the next two weeks, and look for future lineups in Encore!
04/19 - Reefer Madness
04/26 - No End In Sight: “A chronological look at the fiasco in Iraq, especially decisions made in the spring of 2003 - and the backgrounds of those making decisions - immediately following the overthrow of Saddam.”
posted by thingtwoTwo fim festivals will be taking place this week.
Gay Charlotte Film Festival - April 3rd - 5th, 2009
@ the Lesbian & Gay Community Center of Charlotte, 820 Hamilton St., Suite B-11, Charlotte NC
Three days of queer films! What more could you ask for? Check out the line up here.
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival - April 2nd - 5th, 2009
Durham NC
This is a huge festival that brings in filmmakers and film buffs from all over the country. There will be 100s of films, panels, discussions and Q & A’s with filmmakers. I’m unsure of the queer films present at the festival this year, but I’m sure there will be some, along with a bunch of queer filmmakers. I’ll be heading up there for work and I just got a brand new video camera, so expect some footage of the fest!
posted by scantron
What kind of qualities do you want in a Role Model? Well, according to the movie Role Models, telling gay jokes and picking on gay people are a few qualities to have.
My Gay Nerve wrote a blog post after seeing the movie and discussed the poor use of gay jokes throughout the film. His blog received the attention of David Wain, the Director and Co-Writer of the film who replied saying:
Truthfully, if there was one thing I’d change in retrospect about the movie, it’d be what you point out.
Using so many gay jokes was a lazy comedic choice and I didn’t fully realize the quantity until the movie was finished.
I’d hope you could enjoy other elements of the movie, a story about acceptance of differences, despite this oversight.
This was back in November when the movie was in theatres. This week it was released on DVD and the gay jokes are still there. I guess David Wain didn’t really care enough to edit the DVD version if he was so concerned, as he expressed in his comment.
Granted, jokes are just that, jokes. But there’s a difference between a tasteful joke and making fun of people. The latter is not a joke, it’s just downright disrespectful, no matter who is at the butt of the so-called joke. I’m tired of seeing/hearing homophobia, sexism and racism in the media.
posted by scantron
The Rainbow Factory Hosts Queeros on Film:
Now that the L Word is over BYOQ is switching gears to GLBTQ themed movie nights. We are all so saddened (psych, duh) by the loss of the L Word that we figured we could mourn together by watching some gay flicks. Conveniently MTV is premiering the story of Pedro Zamora, an openly gay and HIV positive cast member on The Real World San Fransisco next month. Since it airs on the night of the Cheese Sandwich Festival the Rainbow Factory will record the movie and screen it again on Sunday, April 5th at 8pm. The Popcorn Queen resides at the Rainbow Factory so be sure to bring something to wash that salty snack down. Don’t worry, we will remind you as the date approaches! See you at the Rainbow Factory loves.
posted by bizzzle
Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron will star as Lili Elbe (Einar Wegener) and Gerda Wegener respectively in a new movie based on David Ebershoff’s novel The Danish Girl. Lili Elbe is the first documented transwoman who underwent a series of highly experimental surgeries to transition. She was born Einar Wegener in 1886 and met Gerda Gottlieb while they were students in a Copenhagen art school.
They settled in Paris in 1912 and worked as illustrators, with Einar focusing on painting landscapes while Gerda found commercial success focusing on books and fashion magazines. Lili’s body type also allowed her to pass quite easily as a woman, which she did from 1910 onwards.
When one of Gerda’s models didn’t show up one day, she asked Lili to fill in to great success. Gerda then continued to use Lili in a series of paintings as her model. Sometimes she was dressed in high fashion clothes, other times in the nude.
Beginning in 1930, after Lili’s examination by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, she underwent an experimental series of operations in Berlin to finish her transformation to woman. She had an ovarian transplant performed in the second surgery, but after she experienced severe abdominal pain, had emergency surgery to remove them. She died in 1931 as a result of complications from that failed transplant and is buried in Dresden, Germany.
This sounds like an amazing story and hopefully the film will do this fabulous couple some justice, but why Nicole Kidman? Why not an actual transwoman? Just like a straight actor playing Harvey Milk, it’s a little odd. I mean, I know they have to make money and big names are the way to go, but isn’t this kind of belittling and demeaning? Not to mention straight actors are cashing in on the remarkable stories of queer folks. Something just doesn’t feel right to me.
What do you think?
posted by 
