Above: (left) SALLY!, (proper) HELEN AND THE BEAR
Portraits of Two Iconic Ladies
Simply in time for Satisfaction Month, we’re proud to announce that two California Humanities-supported documentary options will premiere at Frameline48: the San Francisco Worldwide LGBTQ+ Movie Pageant, working June 19-29, 2024. Based in 1977, Frameline is the longest-running signature showcase of the world’s main queer cinema, and this 12 months, SALLY! and HELEN AND THE BEAR will make their competition premieres after years of analysis and manufacturing work.
Each movies are California Documentary Undertaking recipients, California Humanities’ aggressive grant program that helps documentary movie, audio, and digital media productions that discover California in all its complexity and inform tales from each nook of the state. California Humanities will collaborate with Frameline as a group associate to current these two distinctive California tales to new audiences within the Bay Space.
The recipient of a 2021 California Documentary Undertaking Manufacturing Grant, SALLY! is a portrait of Sally Gearhart, a “good Southern woman” who then helped rework the world for girls and queer individuals. She co-founded the first-ever girls research program, wrote firebrand lesbian-feminist works and female-focused fantasy novels, established a utopian girls’s land group in Northern California, and battled for homosexual rights side-by-side with Harvey Milk within the Seventies. However how did a poster youngster of the LGBTQ rights motion find yourself residing alone within the woods, nearly forgotten by historical past?
SALLY! Director Deborah Craig shared with California Humanities a little bit concerning the movie’s journey, and Sally’s place as a pivotal California determine:
“Making the movie SALLY!—about lesbian feminist activist Sally Gearhart—has been a protracted journey with many twists, turns, and bumps within the highway. We couldn’t have made the journey with out the invaluable and ongoing help of California Humanities, and are past thrilled to premiere this June at Frameline48 in San Francisco! This launch is so becoming for a lot of causes. Sally spearheaded the San Francisco homosexual and lesbian motion all through the Seventies and 80s, and the basic movie WORD IS OUT, which normalized homosexual life, featured Sally amongst others and premiered at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre.
We couldn’t have made the journey with out the invaluable and ongoing help of California Humanities, and are past thrilled to premiere this June at Frameline48 in San Francisco!
Deborah Craig
Hers is actually a California story of transformation and fixed evolution: She had deep Southern roots, but turned a flame-throwing lesbian radical, after which morphed but once more to a back-to-the-land eco-minded lesbian separatist in Northern California. In Sally’s final act, she embraced her broader group in Willits, connecting with men and women, homosexual and straight, and even many Republican neighbors. Critically, Sally fought for homosexual rights and girls’s rights throughout a fraught interval, the place people risked their jobs and even their lives to come back out and communicate out. We’re once more in troubled occasions, with the trans group continually below assault and intolerance within the air. What higher second to study a fiery but loving powerhouse who led the cost for visibility, human rights, and justice. We’d like her spirit now greater than ever!”
The recipient of a 2017 CDP Analysis & Growth Grant and 2018 Manufacturing Grant, HELEN AND THE BEAR is a function documentary concerning the unconventional relationship between Helen, a passionately unbiased 63-year-old lady, and her late-husband Pete McCloskey, an iconic California Republican Congressman thirty years her senior. Advised from Helen’s perspective, this movie captures a fiery political couple compelled to guage their contribution to American politics and explores the burdens a public highlight places in your story.
Director Alix Blair stated that McCloskey, who handed away final month at 96, was in a position to see the completed movie earlier than he died:
“Whereas Pete’s passing leaves an enormous gap in California, within the setting and in politics, if it wasn’t for California Humanities I could by no means have completed this movie and I by no means would have had the prospect to share his personal life and his super love for his spouse Helen, nor would I’ve had the prospect to get to know him in nice friendship. One among my biggest gratitudes is that Pete acquired to see the completed movie earlier than he died and gave me his blessings (and laughed on the humorous components!).”
Blair additional communicated his pleasure at sharing this movie—seven years within the making—with the area people right here in California: “California Humanities was the primary group that believed in me and my documentary thought. It may be an extremely lonely expertise to make a movie, to belief that your wild, private thought means something to anybody else. Since this movie is about actual individuals transferring by way of time, the story modified quite a bit over time, however staying in relationship with California Humanities all through these shifts and surprises saved me related to my unique delight and inspiration for making the documentary within the first place. Whereas my movie celebrates the unconventional love story of Pete and Helen McCloskey, it presents common questions of discover your unbiased self in a relationship and challenges what a “good” marriage appears like.
One among my biggest gratitudes is that Pete acquired to see the completed movie earlier than he died and gave me his blessings (and laughed on the humorous components!)
Alix Blair
For tickets to HELEN AND THE BEAR and SALLY!, and to view the total competition lineup, go to the Frameline web site.
To be taught extra concerning the California Documentary Undertaking, go to the venture web page.
