7/30/2022: Gay Liberation, Gay Pride screening at Doc Films

Media Burn presents: Gay Liberation, Gay Pride
Doc Films at the University of Chicago
Saturday July 30 at 5pm
1212 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
$7 ticket/$25 summer pass (Cash only)

 
Join us for a series of short videos from Media Burn Independent Video Archive offering a brief and vivid history of Gay Liberation and queer community in Chicago and elsewhere.
 
The program includes:
 
1. An interview with Gay Liberation activist Jim Fouratt, taken from a 1969 compilation made by the group Global Village. It was originally screened as part of a multi-channel installation that included other interviews as well as concert footage, formalist experiments, and re-edited commercials. (John Reilly & Rudi Stern, 1969, 2 minutes)
 
2. Pink Triangles Rising: In 1982, as news of AIDS first spread widely, the Chicago Gay Pride Parade confronted trouble. “Pink Triangles Rising” documents a day in Lincoln Park when the gay community protested discrimination and celebrated sexual diversity in the face of a pathetic demonstration by anti-gay Nazis. Pro-gay Socialists also showed up to scream at the Nazis. One of the filmmakers even got arrested for throwing an egg at a Nazi. The title of the film pays homage to Kenneth Anger’s gay-themed “Scorpio Rising.” (Dan Dinello and Tom Corboy, 1982, 8 minutes)
 
3. Joan Jett Blakk: Queer Nation’s Candidate for President, 1992: Uncut footage of an interview with Joan Jett Blakk, the drag persona of actor and activist Terence Smith, Queer Nation’s candidate for president in 1992. “If a bad actor can be president, why not a good drag queen?” (Bill Stamets, 1992, 10 minutes)
 
4. Society Street: A rare television documentary from 1978 about writer and trans woman Dawn Langley Simmons. (Dena Crane, 1978, 16 minutes)
 
5. House Music in Chicago: Opening night at the Power House in October 1986, featuring legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles, the “Godfather of House Music.” (Phil Ranstrom, 1986, 13 minutes)
 
6. Gay for a Day: A (mostly) joyful celebration of Chicago’s 1976 Gay Pride Parade made by celebrated filmmaker Tom Palazzolo. (Tom Palazzolo, 1976, 11 minutes)
 
7. Excerpt from “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” a talk by Studs Terkel. The touching story of a family from legendary Chicago chronicler Studs Terkel. (2001, 2 minutes)