Living with Pride: Ruth Ellis @ 100
Documentary
Overview
The oldest known "out" African-American lesbian remembers ten colorful decades in this hour-long documentary, which won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1999. Born July 23, 1899, in Springfield, IL, Ruth Ellis spent most of her life in Detroit. A pioneering independent black businesswoman, she operated her own print shop until the age of 65. In the home she shared with Cecilene "Babe" Franklin, her partner of more than 30 years, she played host to innumerable gatherings of the city's African-American gays and lesbians in an age when segregation excluded them from white homosexual society. A participant in the civil rights movement and a witness of the riots that tore Detroit apart in the 1960s, Ellis later became an icon for, and active participant in, the city's multicultural lesbian and feminist community.
No cast information.
Similar Movies
The 1920s saw a revolution in technology, the advent of the recording industry, that created the first class of African-American women to sing their way to fame and fortune. Blues divas such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter created and promoted a working-class vision of blues life that provided an alternative to the Victorian gentility of middle-class manners. In their lives and music, blues women presented themselves as strong, independent women who lived hard lives and were unapologetic about their unconventional choices in clothes, recreational activities, and bed partners. Blues singers disseminated a Black feminism that celebrated emotional resilience and sexual pleasure, no matter the source.
Is culture accepting of difference? This is the vital question that Nova Scotia filmmaker Paul Émile d'Entremont asks in his film about difference and identity. Alone, Together charts the quest of two Acadians: Simon, who is trying to come to terms with his sexuality, and Cynthia, who is searching for for her biological mother.
Gay saunas are places where men meet strangers to have sex. With exclusive access to one Nottingham business, this candid one-off documentary enters the often controversial and always secretive world of the gay sauna for the very first time. The programme meets the people who go there for sexual pleasure - from teachers to plumbers to Tory councillors - and the staff who clean up after them.
The histories of queer people of color, especially from the SWANA (Southwest Asia/North Africa) region, remains generally unwritten. The lack of this critical representation has served as a guiding axis of Charachchi, a multimedia project created by queer Armenians. "Stories Untold: Meet Queer SWANA Sex Workers and Drag Performers" highlights the stories of queer SWANA sex workers and drag performers, bringing visibility to voices that have remained hidden within mainstream media, history, and cultural spaces.
LIMITED PARTNERSHIP is the love story between Filipino-American Richard Adams and Australian Tony Sullivan, who, in 1975, became one of the first same-sex couples in the world to be legally married. After applying for a green card for Tony based on their marriage, the couple received a denial letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service stating, 'You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.' Outraged at this letter, and to prevent Tony's impending deportation, the couple sued the U.S. government, filing the first federal lawsuit seeking equal treatment for a same-sex marriage in U.S. history. This tenacious story of love, marriage and immigration equality is as precedent setting as it is little known... until now.