Marc Huestis (born December 26, 1954) is an American filmmaker, camp impresario and social activist. He is best known for his motion picture Sex Is... and his in-person tributes/benefit events feting celebrities from Hollywood's Golden Age and cult personas at San Francisco's Castro Theatre. [1]
Huestis was born in Long Island, New York. His mother was a dancer and his father was a video editor at NBC, where he cut the hit TV show Hullabaloo. [2] He studied theater at Binghamton University from 1972 to 1974. Afterwards, Huestis took the famed Green Tortoise to San Francisco & there hooked up with the colorful theatre group the Angels of Light. [3] His interest soon veered to film, taking classes at City College of San Francisco. While getting his super 8 films developed at Harvey Milk's Castro Camera store, he met a group of fellow fledgeling filmmakers. Together with Daniel Nicoletta, Ric Mears and others, Huestis founded the San Francisco Gay Film Festival, now the oldest and largest of its ilk. [4] In 2001, in honor of the 25th Anniversary of the Festival, Huestis and the founding members were given the Frameline Film Festival Award. [5]
Huestis' history as a filmmaker parallels that of the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, now Frameline Film Festival. From the early days of gay film in the 1970s when his grainy super 8 films were projected on stained sheets, to the advent of new technologies, Huestis has been dedicated to being a unique voice in the filmmaking community. He has directed the following titles:
In 1994, along with producer Lawrence Helman, Huestis began to present celebrity tributes at San Francisco's majestic Castro Theatre. The first, The Poseidon Event-ure featuring star Carol Lynley, was a success, selling out the 1400 seat venue. Soon these events drew national attention, where in an article entitled "Celebration of Camp", Variety reporter Dennis Harvey commented " it took local entrepreneur Marc Huestis to perfect a meld of screen and live ultrakitsch." [8]
In the past 15 years, Huestis has produced over 25 staged extravaganzas/tributes. Significant funds from these benefit events have been raised for needy AIDS/socially conscious organizations. Celebrities that have participated in, or been honored by, Huestis' galas (both at the Castro & elsewhere) have included Ann-Margret, Ann Blyth, Ann Miller, Armistead Maupin, Barbara Parkins, Bruce Vilanch, Carol Lynley, Christina Crawford, Connie Champagne, Debbie Reynolds, Edie Adams, Erik Lee Preminger, Hector Elizondo,Mimi Kennedy Jack Lemmon, Jackie Beat, Jan Wahl, Jane Russell, Janeane Garofalo, Jeffrey Sebelia, Joan Baez, JoBeth Williams, John Cameron Mitchell, John Schlesinger, John Waters, Justin Bond, Karen Black, Lady Bunny, Lana Wood, Linda Blair, Lypsinka, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Badham, Michael Musto, Michelle Shocked, Mike Farrell, Mitzi Gaynor, Natalie Wood, Olivia Hussey, Leonard Whiting, Patty Duke, Patty McCormack, Piper Laurie, Reno, Rex Reed, Sandra Dee, Santino Rice, Sissy Spacek, Stella Stevens, Sylvia Miles, Thelma Houston, Tony Curtis, Troy Donahue, Varla Jean Merman, and Rutanya Alda.
In a feature piece in the San Francisco Chronicle written by David Wiegand, tribute Carol Lynley compared the showman favorably to such impresarios as Otto Preminger, Irwin Allen and Mike Todd, and summed up her feelings about Huestis - " He's larger than life; he's larger than imagination." [9] In 2008, Huestis was honored by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for his life achievement and work in benefiting many San Francisco non-profits. [10]
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin and Phyllis Ann Lyon were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists.
The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The venue became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window surmounted by a scrolling pediment framing a niche—to the basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. Its designer, Timothy L. Pflueger, also designed Oakland's Paramount Theater and other movie theaters in California during that period. The theater has over 1,400 seats. The theater's ceiling is the last known leatherette ceiling in the United States and possibly the world. Another leatherette ceiling was demolished just a few years ago. To make the ceiling look as though it is leather requires a special technique regarded as lost today.
Peter Adair was a filmmaker and artist, best known for his pioneering gay and lesbian documentary Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977).
Jenni Olson is a writer, archivist, historian, consultant, and non-fiction filmmaker based in Berkeley, California. She co-founded the pioneering LGBT website PlanetOut.com. Her two feature-length essay films — The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) — premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her work as an experimental filmmaker and her expansive personal collection of LGBTQ film prints and memorabilia were acquired in April 2020 by the Harvard Film Archive, and her reflection on the last 30 years of LGBT film history was published as a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema from Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2020, she was named to the Out Magazine Out 100 list. In 2021, she was recognized with the prestigious Special TEDDY Award at the Berlin Film Festival. She also campaigned to have a barrier erected on the Golden Gate Bridge to prevent suicides.
Mark Finch was an English promoter of LGBT cinema. Having founded and expanded several international film festivals he created the first LGBT film market for distributors, sales agents, and independent film producers.
Yours Emotionally is a United Kingdom-Indian co-produced film written by Niranjan Kamatkar & Sridhar Rangayan and produced by arts charity Wise Thoughts (UK) & Solaris Pictures and directed by Sridhar Rangayan - starring Premjit, Pratik Gandhi, Jack Lamport, Ikhlaq Khan, and Ajai Rohilla. The film was selected for participation in LGBT film festivals in San Francisco, New York (NewFest), and others.
The Frameline Film Festival began as a storefront event in 1976. The first film festival, named the Gay Film Festival of Super-8 Films, was held in 1977. The festival is organized by Frameline, a nonprofit media arts organization whose mission statement is "to change the world through the power of queer cinema". It is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in the world.
Catherine Crouch is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, and actor. She has been active in independent film-making for over two decades. Most of her work explores gender, race, and class in lesbian and queer lives. She is known for Stranger Inside (2001), Stray Dogs (2002), and The Gendercator (2007).
Arthur J. Bressan Jr. was an American director, writer, producer, documentarian and gay pornographer, best known for pioneering independent queer cinema in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. He wrote and directed the 1985 feature film Buddies, which was the first American film to grapple with the subject of the AIDS pandemic. Other directorial endeavors include the largely influential 1977 documentary Gay USA, and the 1983 feature film Abuse. He died on July 29, 1987, at the age of 44 due to an AIDS-related illness.
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.
Daniel Nicoletta is an Italian-American photographer, photojournalist and gay rights activist.
Henry "Hank" Wilson was a longtime San Francisco LGBT rights activist and long term AIDS activist and survivor. The Bay Area Reporter noted that "over more than 30 years, he played a pivotal role in San Francisco's LGBT history." He grew up in Sacramento, and graduated with a B.A. in education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1971.
Fruit Fly is a 2009 musical film with gay and Asian-American themes, directed by H.P. Mendoza, who wrote the screenplay for Colma The Musical (2007). The film, made entirely in San Francisco, premiered on March 15, 2009 at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. It had a limited one-week run in New York on September 24, 2010.
A Marine Story is a 2010 drama film written and directed by Ned Farr about the United States military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay, lesbian and bisexual people serving in the armed forces.
Training Rules is a 2009 American documentary co-produced and co-directed by Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker. It is narrated by Diana Nyad.
Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World is a 2003 documentary film directed by American filmmaker John Scagliotti about the issues experienced by gay, lesbian and transgender people in developing countries. It was the first documentary film to explore these issues in non-Western countries. It is narrated by actress and comedian Janeane Garofalo. It was produced by Janet Baus and Dan Hunt, both of whom had worked with Scagliotti on his previous film, After Stonewall. The film focuses in particular on Cairo 52, a group of 52 Egyptian men who were arrested on board a floating gay nightclub in 2001. It features interviews with gay-rights activists from countries around the world including Honduras, Namibia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam.
That Man: Peter Berlin is a 2005 documentary about the popular gay icon Peter Berlin directed by Jim Tushinski. The documentary had its world premiere at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.
The Castro Organ Devotees Association (CODA) is an American nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the tradition of live organ music in San Francisco's Castro Theatre. The theater is a popular San Francisco movie palace, built in the 1920s, which gained Historic Landmark status in 1976. The original Robert Morton organ was removed in the 1950s. The present organ, widely regarded as one of the finest theatre organs assembled, was assembled in the late 1970s using components from other organs, including its console, which was originally built in 1925 for the State Theatre in Detroit, Michigan to accompany silent pictures. The current console and organ were built by the Taylor family starting in 1979, and it has been owned and maintained by them since, but in 2014 they moved taking the console and one fourth of the pipework.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
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.