Power Lesbians

A short documentary exploring the ways LGBT couples show affection, and how small interactions like holding hands in public can carry, not only huge personal significance, but also the power to create social change.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon have been partners in love and political struggle for fifty years. With incisive interviews, rare archival images and warmhearted humor, Joan Biren's 2003 film reveals their inspiring public work, as well as their charming private relationship. When they courageously launched the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, it became the first public organization for lesbians in America. Today, these tireless activists are educating both the LGBT and aging movements on the needs of older lesbians.

‘Shakedown’ was a series of parties founded by and for African American women in Los Angeles that featured go-go dancing and strip shows for the city’s lesbian underground scene. Inspired by transwoman Mahogany who, as the mother of the scene, presided over queer strip shows and balls for non-heterosexual audiences in the 1980s, butch Ronnie Ron created, produced and presented the new shows. In them, the largely female clientele from the ‘hood’ slipped dollar notes into lap dancers’ panties while celebrating lesbian sexuality to pulsating hip-hop beats.

Portraits six lesbian protagonists from rural and metropolitan parts of the formerly socialist Republic and has them tell their captivating and sometimes outrageous life stories.

Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence.

A documentary about lesbians preserving their history, with a focus on the work of the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Includes interviews with Joan Nestle, Jewelle Gomez, and Mariana Romo-Carmona, among others. Profiled are Mabel Hampton, Marge McDonald, theater group 5 Lesbian Brothers, and Asian Lesbians of the East Coast.

Several elderly homosexual men and women speak frankly about their pioneering lives, their fearless decision to live openly in France at a time when society rejected them.

Mixes documentary interviews of memories of lesbian adolescence with the story of the 12-year-old girl Lou discovering her sexuality in 1960s America.

A confrontation with Camille Paglia, the infamous author.

Documentary that examines lesbian motherhood through the eyes of longtime partners Ann Krsul and Leslie Sullivan, who desperately want to have a child.

Gay women living in the Deep South of the United States share stories of the bigotry, sexism, intimidation, and racism that confronts them in a part of the country known for its culture of Christian conservatism.