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FILM LIBRARY: LGBT

90 Miles
by Juan Carlos Zaldívar

Probing and thoughtful, Juan Carlos Zaldívar's "90 Miles" is a personal memoir that offers a rare glimpse into Cuba, a country as mythologized to Americans as the United States is to the rest of the world. The Cuban-born filmmaker recounts the strange fate that brought him as a teenage communist to exile in Miami in 1980 during the dramatic Mariel boatlift. Zaldívar uses news clips, family photos and home movies to depict the emotional journey of an immigrant father and son struggling to understand the historical and individual forces shaping their relationships and identities in a new country. A Diverse Voices Project Selection.

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Absolutely Positive
by Peter Adair

The nice thing about having a serious disease is that it's okay to say anything you want, and people put up with it. The narrator/filmmaker is Peter Adair "Word is Out" and the disease is the HIV virus. Adair has asked 11 people - women and men, gay and straight, from all walks of life - to share their stories. Alternately irreverent, candid and soulful, this stirring film is not about being sick; it is about being true to the emotional complexity of being mortal. Timely, trenchant, intelligent... frequently moving and occasionally even funny. These stories are deeply felt, direct and compelling, and so is this film. --David Armstrong, San Francisco Examiner

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Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin
by Nancy Kates and Bennett Singer

During his 60-year career as an activist, organizer and "troublemaker," Bayard Rustin formulated many of the strategies that propelled the American civil rights movement. His passionate belief in Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence drew Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders to him in the 1940's and 50's; his practice of those beliefs drew the attention of the FBI and police. But his open homosexuality forced him to remain in the background, marking him again and again as a "brother outsider." "Brother Outsider combines rare archival footage — some of it never before broadcast in the U.S. — with provocative interviews to illuminate the life and work of a forgotten prophet of social change." An Independent Television Service (ITVS) and National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) Co-presentation.

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The Education of Shelby Knox
by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt

What's it like to be a Christian teenage girl today? "The Education of Shelby Knox" profiles a young native of Lubbock, Texas, on the rocky road through high school. At 15, Shelby pledges celibacy until marriage, but because Lubbock has one of the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the state, she also spearheads a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools, opposing the established "abstinence-only" curriculum. When the campaign broadens with a fight for a gay-straight alliance club in the high school, Shelby confronts her parents and her faith as she begins to understand how deeply personal beliefs can inform political action. A co-presentation with the Independent Television Service (ITVS).

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Family Fundamentals
by Arthur Dong

"Family Fundamentals" is the filmmaker's personal attempt to answer an explosive question: "What happens when conservative Christian families have children who are homosexual?" Armed with a digital camera, Dong takes viewers into the private and public lives of three families where parents actively campaign against gay civil rights, despite having gay offspring themselves. A search for common ground between seemingly diametrically opposed camps, "Family Fundamentals" is also a battlefield report from America's profound and disquieting culture war over homosexuality.

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Flag Wars
by Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras

Shot over four years, Bryant and Poitras' "Flag Wars" is a poignant account of competing economic interests between two historically oppressed groups, seen through the politics and pain of gentrification. This story takes place in Columbus, Ohio. Black residents, working-class or poor and often elderly, fight to hold on to their homes and heritage. Realtors and gay home-buyers see the enormous, often run-down homes as fixer-uppers. The inevitable clashes expose prejudice and self-interest on both sides, as well as the common dream to have a home to call your own. Both provocative and elegiac, "Flag Wars" is a candid, unvarnished portrait of privilege, poverty, and local politics taking place across America. An Independent Television Service (ITVS) and National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) co-presentation. A Diverse Voices Project Selection.

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Georgie Girl
by Annie Goldson and Peter Wells

Born George Beyer, one-time prostitute-turned-politician, Georgina Beyer was elected to New Zealand's Parliament in 1999, becoming the world's first transsexual to hold a national office. Amazingly, a mostly white, conservative, rural constituency voted this former sex worker of Maori descent into office. Chronicling Georgina's transformations from farm boy to celebrated cabaret diva to grassroots community leader, "Georgie Girl" couples interviews and images of Beyer's nightclub and film performances with footage showing a day in the life of this New Zealand Member of Parliament. The film presents a remarkable account of Beyer's precedent-setting accomplishment, revealing her intelligence, charisma and humor.

This film is only available in our free lending library for Youth Views screenings.

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Golden Threads
by Lucy Winer and Karen Eaton

If ever someone has embodied the maxim, age is a state of mind, it's 90-year-old Christine Burton. After decades of personal struggle, she reinvented her own life at age 80 by founding Golden Threads, an international network for older gay women. Join filmmakers Lucy Winer and Karen Eaton as they probe mid-life crisis and our collective fear of aging by enlisting Christine as their fearless, funny and irascible spiritual guide. She's a tireless leader who, even when ambushed by daunting physical challenges, transforms herself and others with her own unquenchable zest for life.

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Licensed to Kill
by Arthur Dong

What drives a man to kill? Winner of two top awards at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker Arthur Dong goes inside prison to probe the minds and souls of men whose attitudes toward homosexuality have led them to murder. Hailed as "superb" by Rolling Stone and called a "chilling look at the real face of evil" by the Los Angeles Times, this hour-long, broadcast length version of the film offers a provocative and disturbingly candid exploration of the motivations behind a plague of violence that is sweeping our nation.

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A Litany For Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde
by Ada Gay Griffin and Michele Parkerson

Poet, lover, mother, warrior - Audre Lorde writes passionately of love and anger, civil rights and sexuality, family politics and the glories of nature. Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson reveal the potent legacy of this celebrated African American poet, whose life was cut short after a long battle with breast cancer.

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Living with AIDS
by Tina DiFeliciantonio

If "Armageddon's Door" is about the explosion of community, "Living with AIDS" is just the opposite. It's a graceful, moving film about a community that provides both compassion and care to someone with a debilitating disease, in this case a courageous 22-year-old man with AIDS. Concern over AIDS has produced a crop of films, not to speak of television programmes, but none of them so far matches the power of "Living with AIDS". David Robinson, The Times (London)

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Mai's America
by Marlo Poras

A spunky Vietnamese teenager named Mai gets the chance of a lifetime — to study in the United States. Expecting Hollywood, she instead lands in rural Mississippi, a crazy quilt of self-proclaimed rednecks, cliquish teenagers, South Vietnamese exiles and transvestite soulmates. As she tries to fit in and to make ends meet, Mai discovers that "America" is both less and far more than she bargained for. From cosmopolitan Hanoi to the heart of the Deep South, Mai's unforgettable journey offers an outsider's glimpse inside America. An Independent Television Service (ITVS) and National Asian-American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) (TBD) Co-presentation.

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Metamorphosis: Man Into Woman
by Lisa Leeman

Gary, a 39 year-old successful animation artist and devout Christian, is pursuing a lifelong dream - to become a woman. "Metamorphosis" is a candid, non-sensational and sometimes humorous journey of nearly three years as Gary prepares physically and emotionally for sex reassignment surgery. Along the way, the film raises provocative questions about what really makes us men and women.

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One Nation Under God
by Teodoro Maniaci and Francine Rzeznik

Can homosexuality be cured? From exorcisms to shock therapy, from Homosexuals Anonymous to beauty make-overs for lesbians, many have tried. While some of these methods may seem comical, filmmakers Teodoro Maniaci and Francine Rzeznik pose serious questions about who's asking gay men and lesbians to change and why.

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Scout's Honor
by Tom Shepard

"To be physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight" - this is the Boy Scout pledge. Since 1910, millions of boys have joined. But today, if you are openly gay, you can't. Witness how a 12-year-old Boy Scout named Steven Cozza launches a campaign to overturn the Boy Scouts' anti-gay policy. From Petaluma, California to the Supreme Court, the film chronicles a modern interpretation of the scouting ideals of courage and honor.

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Silverlake Life: The View From Here
by Tom Joslin and Peter Friedman

At the heart of this ground-breaking video diary is a powerful tale of love, commitment, mortality and AIDS. A testament to an extraordinary relationship, a love story in extremis. David Ansen, Newsweek Extraordinarily moving... no one who sees it through to its unexpectedly buoyant final scene will regret the time spent or be unchanged by the experience. Kenneth Turan, LA Times

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The Smith Family
by Tasha Oldham

The Smiths of Salt Lake City may have America's most common surname, but their story is anything but ordinary. With two boys, a dog, a nice house and a strong commitment to the Mormon Church, Steve and Kim Smith believed they had achieved the American dream. But after nine years of marriage, shattering revelations of betrayal came — enough to test the strongest bonds of faith and love. When Steve confessed to infidelities with men, and they both find they are HIV+, Kim makes an unlikely choice. "The Smith Family" is a searing account of one family's struggle to preserve family and faith, while redefining forgiveness in the face of daunting tragedy.

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Tongues Untied
by Marlon Riggs

Marlon Rigg' "Tongues Untied" rises above the 'deeply personal' - far above it - in exploring what it means to be black and gay. Angry, funny, erotic and poetic by turns ( and sometimes all at once), it jumps from interview to confession, music video to documentary to poem. --Craig Seligman, San Francisco Examiner A daring, visionary work that speaks with the eloquence of barbed wire. --Steve Dollar, Atlanta Journal Constitution.

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True-Hearted Vixens
by Mylène Moreno

These women want to play professional football. Make that full contact, NFL-style, smash-mouth football. "True-Hearted Vixens" follows the fortunes of two women and the teams they play for during a six-game exhibition tour of a start-up Women's Professional Football League. With their dreams tied to the league's success, the women grapple with powerful social stereotypes, the league's business practices and their own changing expectations of success.

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Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
by Freida Lee Mock

Tony Kushner, whose epochal Angels in America won a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, has emerged as one of the country's leading playwrights and one of its fiercest moral critics. In the film "Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner," Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock (P.O.V.'s "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision") followed Kushner for three tumultuous years, from September 11, 2001 to the 2004 presidential election, to delve into the passions that keep him reaching for the great American play. Actresses Marcia Gay Harden, Meryl Streep, Tonya Pinkins and Emma Thompson, directors Mike Nichols and George C. Wolfe, and writer/artist Maurice Sendak are seen collaborating with Kushner on such landmark works as Angels in America; Caroline, or Change and Homebody/Kabul.

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