Nancy Kates is an independent filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She directed Regarding Susan Sontag, a feature documentary about the late essayist, novelist, director and activist. Through archival footage, interviews, still photographs and images from popular culture, the film reflects the boldness of Sontag’s work and the cultural importance of her thought, and received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Sundance Documentary Film Program.
The Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is a movie screening event that takes place each October in Tampa, Florida. The primary venue is the Tampa Theatre, but several other cinemas in or near the downtown area and in St. Petersburg simultaneously host the event as well. While most of the films focus on homosexual themes, some films explore other areas of human sexuality including transgender issues and gender roles.
Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress. Dunye's work often concerns themes of race, sexuality, and gender, particularly issues relating to black lesbians. She is known as the first out black lesbian to ever direct a feature film with her 1996 film The Watermelon Woman. She runs the production company Jingletown Films based in Oakland, California.
Daughter from Đà Nẵng is a 2002 documentary film about an Amerasian, Heidi Bub, meeting her biological family in Da Nang, decades after being brought to the United States in 1975 during Operation Babylift at the end of the Vietnam War.
Debra Chasnoff was an American documentary filmmaker and activist whose films address progressive social justice issues. Her production company GroundSpark produces and distributes films, educational resources and campaigns on issues ranging from environmental concerns to affordable housing to preventing prejudice.
Thomas Allen Harris is a critically acclaimed, interdisciplinary artist who explores family, identity, and spirituality in a participatory practice. Since 1990, Harris has remixed archives from multiple origins throughout his work, challenging hierarchy within historical narratives through the use of pioneering documentary and research methodologies that center vernacular image and collaboration. He is currently working on a new television show, Family Pictures USA, which takes a radical look at neighborhoods and cities of the United States through the lens of family photographs, collaborative performances, and personal testimony sourced from their communities..
Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!! is a 2009 comedy film directed, co-written, and produced by Evgeny Afineevsky and starring Lainie Kazan, Saul Rubinek, Vincent Pastore, John Lloyd Young, Jai Rodriguez, Bruce Vilanch, Fred Swink and Carmen Electra. The theme song, "The Word Is Love" was written by Desmond Child and performed by Lulu. "The Word is Love" was contending for nominations in the Original Song category for the 82nd Academy Awards.
Cruel and Unusual is a 2006 American documentary film directed and produced by Janet Baus, Dan Hunt and Reid Williams about the experiences of transgender women in the United States prison system. It was screened on television as Cruel and Unusual: Transgender Women in Prison.
Julian Shaw is an author, filmmaker and actor, best known for directing the 2007 film Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story, a British Film Institute award-winning documentary about the life of South African political satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys. Shaw is the author of the novel Modern Odysseus, and the creator of several short films including Clearing the Air. He is the director of the 2011 feature documentary Cup of Dreams, about New Zealand's national Rugby Union team the All Blacks. Shaw also gained worldwide fame in 2011 after starring in an Australian marriage equality advertisement entitled It's Time that has reached millions of people.
Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies.
Fish Out of Water is a 2009 documentary film by director Ky Dickens. The film showcases the seven Bible verses that are most often used to condemn homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Dickens spoke with ministers on both sides of the debate surrounding homosexuality and the Bible for the film.
Out in the Silence is a 2009 documentary film directed by Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer. It chronicles the chain of events that occur when the severe bullying of a gay teenager draws Wilson and his partner back to the conservative rural community of Oil City, Pennsylvania, where their own same-sex wedding announcement had previously ignited a controversy. The film focuses on the widely varying, emotional reactions of the town's residents including the teenager and his mother, the head of the local chapter of the American Family Association, and an evangelical pastor and his wife.
Julie Casper Roth, is an American artist, documentary filmmaker, experimental video artist, and writer based in Connecticut.
Pageant is a 2008 documentary film directed and produced together by Ron Davis and Stewart Halpern. The film explored the behind-the-scenes dramas and realities of the 34th Miss Gay America Contest held in 2004. The film's central theme was the universal desire to be beautiful, noticed and chosen. The film garnered 10 film festival awards before airing on the Sundance Channel in 2010.
XXXY is a short documentary directed by Porter Gale and Laleh Soomekh.
Marion Lipschutz is an American documentary producer, writer, and director. Lipschutz has directed and produced award-winning documentaries, including BEI BEI, The Education of Shelby Knox and Young Lakota.
Rose Rosenblatt is an American producer, director, editor, and writer of documentary films. She directed and edited the Sundance award winningThe Education of Shelby Knox (2005); and Young Lakota (2013).
Johnny Symons is a documentary filmmaker focusing on LGBT cultural and political issues. He is a professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University, where he runs the documentary program and is the director and co-founder of the Queer Cinema Project. He received his BA from Brown University and his MA in documentary production from Stanford University. He has served as a Fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program.
Ilppo Anssi Pohjola is an independent filmmaker, producer and artist based in Helsinki, Finland. His international breakthrough was Daddy and the Muscle Academy (1991), a documentary about Tom of Finland. Pohjola has produced the cinematic installations and films by Eija-Liisa Ahtila since 1993.
It's Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School is a 1996 American documentary film directed by Debra Chasnoff and Helen Cohen. It provides educators with information on how to teach elementary schoolchildren to be tolerant of gay and lesbian people. The film was noted as the "first of its kind" and was generally well received, although there was some backlash from conservatives. It was released in several film festivals, and had screenings in the 2000s.
