U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s
Great Documentaries
Below are a selection of LQBTQ+ documentaries available for streaming through SCU Library.
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After Stonewall
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In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's gay community. With this outpouring of courage and unity the Gay Liberation Movement had begun. After Stonewall, the sequel to Before Stonewall, chronicles the history of lesbian and gay life from the riots at Stonewall to the end of the century. It captures the hard work, struggles, tragic defeats and exciting victories experienced since them. It explores how AIDS literally changed the direction of the movement. The two films, Before & After, tell the remarkable tale of how homosexuals, a heretofore hidden and despised group, became a vibrant and integral part of America's family, and, indeed, the world community.
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The watermelon woman
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Cheryl Dunye's debut feature is as controversial as it is sexy and funny. Cheryl is a twenty-something black lesbian working as a clerk in a video store while struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, an obscure black actress from the 1930's. Cheryl is surprised to discover that Richards (known popularly as "the Watermelon Woman") had a white lesbian lover. At the same time, Cheryl falls in love with a very cute white customer at the video store (Guinevere Turner from Go Fish). Such are the complexities of race and sex in this startlingly fresh debut, which has been attacked by conservative Congressmen for having been funded by the NEA and lavishingly praised in the editorial pages for being charming and courageous.
Publication Date: 1997 -
Gen Silent
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What would you do if you were old, disabled or ill – and the person feeding you put down the spoon and said that you are going to hell unless you change your sexual preference? Sound absurd? Social workers around the world say it’s happening every day. Gen Silent is the critically acclaimed documentary from filmmaker Stu Maddux that asks six LGBT seniors if they will hide their friends, their spouses- their entire lives in order to survive in the care system. Their surprising decisions are captured through intimate access to their day-to-day lives over the course of a year. It puts a face on what experts in the film call an epidemic: gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender older people so afraid of discrimination by caregivers or bullying by other seniors that many simply go back into the closet. Unlike any film before, Gen Silent startlingly discovers how oppression in the years before Stonewall now affects older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people with fear and isolation. Many who won the first civil rights victories for generations to come are now dying prematurely because they are reluctant to ask for help and have too few friends or family to care for them. Gen Silent shows the disparity in the quality of paid caregiving from mainstream care facilities committed making their LGBT residents safe and happy, to places where LGBT elders face discrimination by staff and bullying by other seniors. As we watch the challenges that these men and women face, we are offered new hope as each person crosses paths with impassioned people trying to change LGBT aging for the better. Gen Silent’s recent screenings include Fortune 500 companies, the world’s leading colleges and universities as well as some of its largest conferences on aging, psychology and LGBT advocacy. We are even prouder of the community centers, places of worship and student groups using Gen Silent.
Publication Date: 2011
HIST 177: Gay/Lesbians in U.S. History
This course traces "the history of same-sex desire from the pre-Columbian period to the present within the larger, rich history of the changing social, economic, political, and intellectual life within the United States. Issues of gender, race, class, reographic setting, and ethnicity will merit appropriate attention, particularly as those categories relate to differences in power and privilege, leading to inequality and injustice. " (from the syllabus).
This guide is designed to help you find resources for your research paper. You will learn how to find and evaluate secondary sources (books and scholarly articles), as well as primary sources related to your specific topic.
Stonewall Inn, Pride Week-End 2016 (Rhododentrites, Wikimedia Commons)
he history of same-sex desire from the pre-Columbian period to the present
within the larger, rich history of the changing social, economic, political, and intellectual
life within the United States. Issues of gender, race, class, geographic setting, and
ethnicity will merit appropriate attention, particularly as those categories relate to
differences in power and privilege, leading to inequality and injustice. Through a variety
of primary and secondary sources, we will examine self-conceptions and self-
identifications of gay men and lesbians as well as the constructs of homosexuality and the
resultant prescribed roles.
identifications of gay men and lesbians as well as the constructs of homosexuality and the
resultant prescribed roles.
