[Image description: a faded rainbow background with glints and sparkle of light. A filmstrip with Pride colors sits behind the title text and a city skyline of the Lehigh Valley. The Bradbury-Sullivan Center and ArtsQuest logo are in the bottom left]
Wednesday, April 9 @ 7:00pm
Señorita
2011 | NR | 1 hr 39 min
Directed by: Isabel Sandoval
Starring: Isabel Sandoval, Publio Briones III, Dominic Milano Palomo
In Tagalog & English with English subtitles.
After abandoning her life as a sex worker in Manila, transgender woman Donna (played by filmmaker Isabel Sandoval) retreats to a quieter existence in a small town where she is raising her 12-year-old foster son Tomas and working on the campaign of an honest and idealistic underdog mayoral candidate. The discovery that a powerful and ruthless former client is the puppet master pulling the strings of the corrupt opposition spurs her to make provocative moves on the campaign trail and to return to the bed of a man she despises as she uses her sexual wiles as part of a perilous gambit to take him down.
This screening will be followed by a pre-recorded virtual interview with Writer/Director/Star Isabel Sandoval.
Thursday, June 5 @ 7:00pm
Freedom Day Parade & Gay USA
1977 | NR | 1 hr 23 min
Directed by: Arthur J. Bressan Jr.
Beautifully restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with Frameline and Outfest, Gay USA is the first American feature-length documentary by and about LGBTQ+ people. Director Arthur J. Bressan Jr. (best known for his 1985 gay drama Buddies) mobilized camera crews across the country to document the national Gay Freedom Day marches in June of 1977. Gay USA conveys the passion, anger, and defiant optimism of a community under attack (in that month of June 1977 alone: California's anti-gay Briggs Initiative had just been announced, Anita Bryant's vicious homophobia had helped repeal Miami's gay rights ordinance, and a gay man named Robert Hillsborough had only days earlier been the victim of a fatal gay-bashing in San Francisco).
Bressan weaves in audio of some of those homophobic voices and gives an overview of historical homophobia, including an account of gays and the Holocaust — and then illustrates the triumphant power of love and pride. In addition to the magnificent cross-section of footage from the marches in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, and Philadelphia, Gay USA also gives us a fantastic look at rare footage shot by Lilli Vincenz of the very first gay pride parade in New York City in 1970 (which was then known as Christopher Street Liberation Day) as well as showing Bressan's own previously shot footage from San Francisco's first major gay pride celebration in 1972.
This screening will begin with the 11-minute documentary short Freedom Day Parade. Director Wakefield Poole moved to San Francisco in 1974 and captured the energy and sights of an early San Francisco gay pride parade, set to a campy, eclectic soundtrack.
For more information, visit the SteelStacks film page
Questions? Please email [email protected]