BRATTLEBORO-p>"Do Say Gay" is this year's theme of CineSlam, Kopkind's annual Pride month film fest. The screening of LGBTQ+ short films will take place on Saturday, June 29, beginning at 4 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre on Main Street. The event's organizers see it as both a community celebration - there will be a reception with Pride cake - and a political intervention.
"Film festivals, posters, and other forms of public art have played an important part in the community's organizing over the past 50 years," says documentary filmmaker John Scagliotti, who administers Kopkind and is co-coordinator, with Christopher Dawes, of CineSlam. "They have been vital to getting ourselves together but also to organizing the wider culture. Shape the culture, and you also shape the politics.
"This is a critical time for the LGBT community, as legislatures keep pushing anti-trans bills, censors ban books that acknowledge our existence, and right-wing opportunists do what they've been doing since the backlash to Stonewall: waging a culture war as part of an agenda to attack not just gay people but the left, and rollback any progressive gains. They say 'Don't Say Gay'; we say, 'Do Say Gay.' It's a fight for humanity, really, and Kopkind's CineSLAM festival is part of it."
The selection of short films to be screened at the Latchis includes narratives, documentaries, and animations.
In the dystopian Safety State, a gay and a lesbian couple form an unlikely friendship as they flee the Midwest for New England.
In Remembering the Glade, legendary showgirl Brandy Lee recalls at 80 how a Honolulu nightclub famous for its "Boys Will Be Girls" revue became a place of community, refuge, and joy for mahu, two-spirit individuals.
Lavender Outlaws tells the story of country musicians who come together amidst a wave of violence and legislation against their community in Nashville.
The Little Piratemaid is an animated short about what it takes to discover yourself as a trans person in a cis-normative world - even if that world is one of pirates and mermaids.
Kopkind is a living memorial to the great radical gay journalist Andrew Kopkind. Since the summer of 1999, it has created space for left journalists, activists, and documentary filmmakers to come together to exchange ideas and experience, workshop films, and follow in Kopkind's spirit of thinking deeply, living expressively and extending the field for freedom, pleasure, and imagination.
This year's seminar and retreats will be held from July 20 through Aug. 11, with free public events on Wednesday, July 24, and Friday, July 27. A 25th anniversary celebration will be on Saturday, Aug. 24. For information on those future events, see forthcoming posts on [email protected] or call 646-498-5810.
Tickets for CineSlam are $12 and can be purchased online at filmfreeway.com/cineslam/tickets. Subject to availability, tickets may also be purchased at the door from 3:30 to 4 p.m.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.