A mosaic of interviews with 26 gay and lesbian individuals who describe their experiences coming out, falling in and out of love, and struggling against prejudice and discriminatory laws, "Word Is Out" is the first feature-length documentary about queer identity made by queer filmmakers. These interviewees include poet Elsa Gidlow, political activist Sally Gearhart, inventor John Burnside, civil rights leader Harry Hay, and avant-garde filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky. The film had a huge impact and became an icon of the emerging gay rights movement of the 1970s. Almost fifty years later, ripe for rediscovery, it is at once a record of past struggles and an occasion for reflecting on how far we still have to go. In honor of its place in history, “Word is Out” was selected for the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, and we will be screening the restored version.
/ Details
Year: 1977
Country: USA
Language: english
Subtitles: english
With: Achebe “Betty” Powell, Ann Samsell, Bernice “Whitey” Fladden, Cynthia Gair, David Gillon, Dennis Chiu, Donald Hackett, Elsa Gidlow, Freddy Gray, George Mendenhall, Harry Hay, John Burnside, Linda Marco, Michael Mintz, Mark Pinney, Nadine Armijo, Nathaniel Dorsky, Pam Jackson, Pat Bond, Rick Stokes, Roger Harkenrider (Tom Fitzpatrick), Rusty Millington, Sally Gearhart, Tede Mathews
/ Direction
Peter Adair, Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Rob Epstein, Lucy Massie Phenix, Veronica Selver (The Mariposa Film Group)
USA
The Mariposa Film Group was a pioneering, democratic collective of six queer filmmakers: the producer Peter Adair and his sister Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Rob Epstein, Lucy Massie Phenix, and Veronica Selver. Together, these filmmakers assembled one of the greatest collections of queer oral history on record before the AIDS crisis.