Arts & Entertainment

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Documentary on San Francisco Trans Movement Premieres Online (VIDEO)

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, one of the first recorded transgender riots in United States history. In a recent NPR story, it was called “the transgender community’s debut on the stage of American political history” by Susan Stryker, one of the directors of the 2005 documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria. KQED’s Truly CA has announced that Screaming Queens is now available online in its entirety. You can watch the film above or here. Screaming Queens introduces viewers to a diverse cast of former prostitutes, drag entertainers, […]

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Film Review: Women He’s Undressed

Gillian Armstrong’s captivating documentary on three-time Academy Award Winning Costume Designer the larger than life Orry-Kelly starts out with a rather wonderful statement ‘He called himself a hem stitcher, yet he really was a Hollywood Star. In the country he’s come from, that’s bloody amazing, but no-one has ever heard of him’.  The country it refers too is Australia which a very young Orry George Kelly left for the US in the 1920’s to find fame and fortune on Broadway. His career as a chorus boy though he claims was hampered by his ‘weak arms’ and after he had dropped […]

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Raising Children Queerly: Four Books For Summer Reading

In full disclosure, I often describe myself as not being a “kid person.” And it’s true — when I came out in the early 1980s, I thought I was off the hook for getting married and having children. Whew. I chronicled my young child-free lesbian life in Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters (2012, Bella Books): “It was the early 1980s, a few years before lesbians were starting to take trips to the sperm banks. Most of the lesbians we knew with children had them in previous marriages — to men — and more than a few women […]

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Transparent Leads the LGBT Emmy Nominations, as Drag Race Picks Up its First Nod

  LGBT drama Transparent leads the LGBT nominations at the Emmy’s, as Drag Race picked up its first nod. The Amazon Original Series about a parent that comes out as trans picked up half a dozen nominations, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Jeffrey Tambor. What’s The Perfect Drink To Go With Your Dinner Tonight? Use This Guide To Find The Right Match. ㅤNo matter what you’re eating tonight, Coca-Cola Freestyle has the perfect beverage to be paired with it. Ad by Coca-Cola RuPaul has been nominated for the first time as Outstanding […]

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Trans-Themed Web Series “Her Story” Just Got Nominated For An Emmy

 Her Story, a fictional web series directed by Sydney Freeland that depicts the romantic lives of trans and queer women, scored a 2016 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series on Thursday. Jen Richards and Laura Zak / Speed of Joy Productions The Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series category was newly added to the competition this year. “We had hope, certainly, because we’ve seen incredible momentum and support to date,” series star Laura Zak told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview on Thursday. “Still, we all thought [a nomination] was pretty unlikely. If you […]

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“Dance The Night Away” With Transcendence Theatre Co. at Jack London Park

Transcendence Theatre Company presents Dance the Night Away August 5-7, 12-14, and 19-21 featuring show-stopping dance numbers celebrating tap to Fosse and everything in between combined with powerful vocal performances to create a rousing evening of entertainment. ”Dance the Night Away” will pay tribute to many well-known dancers and singers sharing some of their most popular music,” remarked show director Tony Gonzalez. He continues his description of the show: “The concept of ‘dancing the night away’ actually goes beyond the standard idea of dancing. This is about getting lost in the joy of movement and music, which is really something […]

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Pop Culture Still Fails Queer People: Sanitizing LGBT Romance is a Tradition Hollywood Can’t Seem to Break

  Your partner has been in a coma for 20 years. Because you happen to be a doctor in the hospital in which he is housed, you have spent that entire time taking care of his every need—cutting his beard, bathing him, and making sure the situation doesn’t turn into “Million Dollar Baby.” One day he abruptly awakes, and the moment is startling and emotional. Do you: share a sweet, tender kiss hug exchange a hi-five give him a handshake and a cigar? In “Independence Day 2,” the answer is anything but 1. Roland Emmerich’s long-awaited follow-up to his 1996 […]

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Book Review: ‘Walking the Dog’ by Elizabeth Swados

Even from the description, Elizabeth Swados book Walking the Dog sounds like a thrill; lauded as “a singular and unequaled artist,” this was the last published work that Swados wrote before she died in January of 2016. The book details the struggles of “former child prodigy and rich-girl kleptomaniac” Ester Rosenthal (aka Carleen Kepper) as she navigates a post-prison life as a high-end professional dog walker. The novel also maps the relationship between the ex-con protagonist and her hyper-religious Orthodox daughter. The descriptions don’t do the novel justice—not only is this a story of a woman brutalized by a system that […]

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Outfest Film Review: “Last Man Standing”

It seems very apt that this highly emotional documentary that tells the poignant stories of 8 gay men who are long-time AIDS survivors is the work of The South Francisco Chronicle as it is Northern California’s largest newspaper and as such was always reporting more than most from the front line of the pandemic.  Since 1981 when the first death was recorded in the city, some 20000 people in the City, mostly gay men, have died from AIDS. The film, the first one that the paper has ever produced, is part of a larger special report featuring interactive digital and […]

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Book Review: ‘Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann’ by Frederic Spotts

Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann, author of Mephisto, was one of the first in Germany to write gay novels and plays. Not since reading Judith Thurman’s excellent biography of Colette some years back, have I been so captivated by a piece of writing and scholarship and the creative life and historical period it captures. The reverberations with our own contemporary times are uncanny and raise provocative questions about the role of the queer artist in society, especially a society faced with the lure of fascism and anti-liberal conservatism. Klaus was an early foe of Nazism, writing against the wave […]

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