EQUAL Episode 1 & 3
Suggested watch time: 10/18 @ 5:30 PM PDT
Live Q&A moderated by Jenni Olson with director Stephen Kijak, Jai Rodriguez, and Cheyenne Jackson: 10/18 @ 7:00 PM PDT
Stephen Kijak; 2020; USA; 40 min.
The Seattle Queer Film Festival is proud to present this sneak preview of 2-episodes of a 4-part documentary series (soon airing on HBO Max) on the LGBTQ+ activist pioneers who helped change the course of American history, by director Stephen Kijak (SID & JUDY, SQFF 2019). Viewers will meet a wide range of LGBTQ+ visionaries portrayed by the cast, many of whom identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Episode 1 explores the rise of early organizations, The Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. Real life figures are portrayed by award-winning actors; Dale Jennings (Cheyenne Jackson), Harry Hay (SAG® nominee Anthony Rapp), Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon (Primetime Emmy® nominee Shannon Purser & Heather Matarazzo), and primetime J.M. from Cleveland (Emmy® nominee & Daytime Emmy® nominee Sara Gilbert).
Using archival images and dramatizations, episode 3 focuses on the American civil rights movement and features the true stories of Lorraine Hansberry (Samira Wiley, The Handmaid’s Tale), who wrote the groundbreaking play A Raisin in the Sun; Bayard Rustin (Keiynan Lonsdale, LOVE, SIMON); and José Sarria (Jai Rodriguez, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy), who performed comic operas in drag at the Black Cat.
Fully subtitled
DEAF/HARD OF HEARING FRIENDLY FILM
NO CONTENT WARNINGS
Moderator Jenni Olson
One of the world’s leading experts on LGBT cinema history, Jenni Olson is an independent writer and non-fiction filmmaker based in Berkeley, California.
Her reflection on the last 30 years of LGBT film history, in The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2021. Jenni’s work as a film historian includes the Lambda Award nominated The Queer Movie Poster Book (Chronicle Books, 2005). She is a former co-director of the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, the oldest and largest queer film festival on the planet. She holds a BA in Film Studies from the University of Minnesota and is currently an independent consultant in marketing and digital film distribution. A 2018 MacDowell Fellow, Jenni is now in development on her third feature-length essay film, The Quiet World and an essayistic memoir of the same name.