Arts & Entertainment
Documenting our lives
Story of slain Ugandan activist among LGBT stories at Silverdocs festival
Silverdocs Festival
June 18-24
AFI Silver Theatre
8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring
‘Call Me Kuchu’ — June 20 at 9:30 p.m. and June 22 at 8:30 p.m.
‘How to Survive a Plague’ — June 20 at 7 p.m.
‘Ray: A Life Underwater’ — June 21 at noon.
Individual tickets cost $12, however Silverdocs is offering various package deals that allow access to multiple screenings and the conference.A scene from ‘Call Me Kuchu’ showing Uganda activist David Kato in what would end up being the last year of his life. (Still courtesy Silverdocs)
When two filmmakers set out to capture the work of LGBT activist and Uganda’s first openly gay man, they didn’t realize they were also filming the last year of his life.
“It was an incredibly hard thing to go through,” says Malika Zouhali-Worrall of her work with the late David Kato. “We spent a lot of time with him while he was working and during his private time. It came as an awful shock to both of us.”
Worrall and fellow filmmaker Katherine Wright tell Kato’s story in their new documentary “Call Me Kuchu,” which is screening in the upcoming Silverdocs Festival at the AFI Silver Theatre, which kicks off Monday for its 10th year. It’s a seven-day film festival with a five-day conference that promotes documentary film as an art form.
Sky Sitney, festival director of Silverdocs, says the movie will shock those who are largely unaware of what is happening in Uganda while drawing viewers close to the subjects.
“I think it is the way the film takes the topic and weaves it through personal stories, allows intimate access so that you are deeply invested in their lives, that makes it so powerful,” she says.
Worrall is a freelance reporter for CNN and this is her first feature length film. Wright was a film studies and anthropology major at Columbia University and has produced other feature length films including, “Gabi On the Roof in July,” while also directing shorts.
Worrall and Wright began filming in January 2010 after a transgender man named Victor Mukasa won a court case in the high court of Uganda, granting him his right to privacy after it had been violated during a raid. They shot the film with a less than $300,000 budget provided by various backers and a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. The filmmakers chose the term “kuchu” because this is the umbrella term used there for members of the LGBT community.
The film observes Kato and other activists as they fervently try to get Uganda’s homophobic laws repealed while preventing a new anti-homosexuality bill from passing in parliament. The new law would have HIV-positive gay men sentenced to death while others would be sentenced to life imprisonment. Kato was one of the founding members of Sexual Minorities Uganda, an underground movement for LGBT rights. However, Kato’s life abruptly ended when a man named Sidney Nsubuga Enoch, a local gardener and apparently a well-known thief, murdered him in his home.
At the time, Wright and Worrall were in New York planning their next trip to Uganda to shoot. They decided they needed to go back to Uganda immediately — Wright left the next day.
“We realized our film suddenly became about the last year of Kato’s life and added a sense of urgency, it was really intense,” Worrall says.
Though the documentary is LGBT specific, it was not this element that attracted Worrall and Wright to Uganda.
“It wasn’t so much that I was interested in LGBT rights more than any other human rights, but more that these people had these destinies laid out for them by these laws,” Wright says.
To fully depict the causes of these laws and their effect, the filmmakers traveled back and forth between anti-gay community members and LGBT activists. Both Worrall and Wright say it’s important for American audiences to understand what inspired the creation of the new bill.
“Getting all the basic facts is really important,” Worrall says. “Understanding what is happening in Uganda, and that it is very much related to American evangelicals and American foreign policy.”
Specifically, Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer, all American evangelicals, were invited to participate in a workshop in Uganda in 2009 where they spoke about the international “gay agenda.” According to a New York Times article, Lively told attendees that gays sodomize children and would destroy the culture. Soon after the bill was proposed, Worrall says they filmed a scene where a group of evangelicals celebrated and praised the government for proposing it.
Despite the hostility toward the LGBT community, members were still able to find ways to enjoy their lives. Wright says capturing these moments was of special importance to them.
“It was invigorating to see how these people were able to organize themselves despite the persecution,” she says. “It wasn’t the narrative victimization that you might have expected.”
Filming members of the LGBT community could still threaten their security, and some declined to be shown on camera for fear of being outed by local tabloids, which list LGBT people by name under headlines, “Homo Terror! We Name and Shame Top Gays,” according to the movie’s website.
Though Worrall and Wright are straight, they wanted to use the work being done by the LGBT community as a different way to approach Uganda, and by extension Africa.
“It was a way to capture a vivid portrait of people,” Worrall says. “Especially now that David is gone it has become very urgent.”
Worrall will be attending the Silverdocs with one of the film’s protagonists, Long Jones. The U.S. premiere of the film is occurring at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Saturday. The screening at Silverdocs will be the East Coast premiere of the film and will occur on June 20 and June 22 near the end of the festival.
“We are very excited to premiere it in the U.S.,” Worrall says. “It was first premiered in the Berlin Film Festival and the reaction there was incredible.”
Sitney says “Call Me Kuchu” will provide a juxtaposition to another film with LGBT themes, “How to Survive a Plague,” which revisits the 1980s when HIV/AIDS was still greatly feared and effective treatment was largely unavailable.
“One film is showing an injustice that is going on literally today and the act of change in positive and negative ways,” she says. “One is a retrospective look, to see what has changed and what has remained the same.”
“Call Me Kuchu,” which runs 87 minutes, is in the running for a grand jury prize while “How to Survive a Plague,” is one of the centerpieces of the festival.
Another film that doesn’t have prevalent LGBT themes but is directed by lesbian director Amanda Bluglass is “Ray: A Life Underwater,” a 14-minute short provides a portrait of 75-year-old deep-sea diver named Ray Ives who has been exploring the bottom of the ocean for 50 years while wearing a diving suit from the 1900s.
Sitney says that including these films adds to the diversity of the festival, but they do not specifically look for films with LGBT themes, or any specific themes, when reviewing submissions.
“We already make this festival exclusively about documentary films, we don’t want to set too many other boundaries,” she says. “We don’t choose central themes, but some emerge unintentionally.”
Sitney says that each film should be accessible to a non-LGBT audience, by breaking cultural parameters to create a “stunning and beautiful quality of work.”
Out & About
Blade Foundation to host fundraiser in Rehoboth on Sept. 12
Mayor-elect Stewart, state Rep. Snyder-Hall to give remarks
The Washington Blade Foundation will host a fundraiser on Saturday, Sept. 12 in Rehoboth Beach featuring remarks from Rehoboth’s Mayor-elect Susan Stewart and Delaware state Rep. Claire Snyder-Hall.
The Foundation funds fellowships for aspiring queer journalists and enterprise journalism projects.
The event will be held at a private home in Rehoboth. Tickets are $100 and include open bar from Diego’s, catered appetizers from the Blue Moon, entertainment, guest speakers, and an auction. Tickets are available here.
Books
New book examines fashionista Audrey Smaltz’s fabulous life
‘Every Inch a Lady’ reveals finding true love with another woman
‘Every Inch a Lady’
By Audrey Smaltz with Alina Mitchell
c.2026, Amistad
$27.99/256 pages
Snaps, zippers, buttons, ties.
Toss that garment on, pull it up, wrap it around, you know what you like and how to wear it. The color is perfect for your skin tone, the fabric enhances your form. Yep, you always look your best and, as in the new book “Every Inch a Lady” by Audrey Smaltz (with Alina Mitchell), that best is fabulous.
”Born, bred, toasted, buttered, jellied, and honeyed in Harlem” in 1937, Audrey Smaltz was a force to be reckoned with almost from the time she could walk. Her parents imbued confidence in her, they nurtured her creativity and sent her to charm school, but they never allowed her to create a stir.
“That,” says Smaltz, “is not what ladies did.”
By the time she was a teenager, Smaltz was modeling for New York City designers. Shortly thereafter, she started working for a married man with whom she had an affair, and whom she loved very much. She broke up with him, attended college, worked a series of jobs that taught her about fashion and jobs that didn’t seem to fit her. An ill-fated marriage took her to Chicago where she ultimately landed a position that sent her to work in Ebony magazine’s New York office.
Working at Ebony was a career-changer, in a way. Smaltz was able to travel the world and learn more about fashion, but she didn’t exactly get along with her boss.
Finally, seizing an opportunity, Smaltz decided to launch her own company, Audrey Smaltz, Inc., a “fashion production business,” but she couldn’t get any designers to take a chance on her. Undaunted, she reorganized, re-branded, hit the streets, and knocked on doors until she finally found one client, which led to many others.
Through it all, her personal life was a whirlwind. She dated “more men than you can shake a book at,” settling down occasionally, briefly. Fashion had always been her first love, but she accidentally found real love, “the love of a woman,” at a leadership course.
There’s an old saying that writers need to add lots of “color” into their stories. Read a little of “Every Inch a Lady,” and you’ll notice immediately that author Audrey Smaltz (with Alina Mitchell) quite literally takes that to heart by mentioning nearly every color of the spectrum here. Hmm.
That oddity aside, Smaltz is a wonderfully lively storyteller, speaking with the energy of a woman much younger to the heart of anyone who loves fashion. That glee extends to collectors of vintage clothing, who will be delighted to read about the industry long ago and the way things worked then. Smaltz says she experienced racism, which is not unusual for pre-Civil Rights America, but doors were surprisingly closed for other reasons that will astound anyone who’s savvy about the fashion industry, even today.
There’s quite a bit of name-dropping in this book but most of it belongs in the anecdotes, so you likely won’t mind. If you’re a fashionista, too, find “Every Inch a Lady,” and snap it up.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Theater
Actress takes on bisexual ‘Ma’ Rainey in new Round House production
Haskins relishes playing ‘impassioned Black woman who sticks to her guns’
‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’
Sept. 9-Oct. 11
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway
Bethesda, MD 20814
$50 and up
Roundhousetheatre.org
Among the Black blues women of the 1920s and 1930s, being “in the life” wasn’t uncommon. Self-supporting and often on the road, they followed the Great Northern Migration to places like Chicago and Harlem, where they lived independent lives, made music, enjoyed same-sex relationships, and partied with like-minded ladies.
Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, best known as the “mother of the blues,” fit the bill. A big star, Ma toured the country and sold hit records nationwide. She lived an openly bisexual life.
In 1925, hosting an “indecent” all-female party at a Chicago apartment, landed Ma in jail, but blues singer Bessie Smith, Ma’s protégée and erstwhile girlfriend, promptly bailed her out. Three years later, Ma released a popular track whose lyrics included “Went out last night with a crowd of my friends / They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.”
She was also a woman who knew her value. Ma’s voice was a powerful passport.
Ma Rainey is the ultimate force of strength and resistance in August Wilson’s 1982 play, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” the first of the late playwright’s brilliant Century Cyle, a collection of mostly Pittsburgh-set plays that chronicle the 20th century African-American experience.
Poised to kick off a month-long run at Round House (Sept. 9-Oct. 11), the production (co-produced with Olney Theatre Center) is directed by Lili-Anne Brown and features out actor and powerhouse vocalist Nicole Michelle Haskins making her Round House debut as Ma Rainey.
Set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, the drama follows Ma, her Black band members and white producers as they try to record a new album of her sons. Tensions over artistic control, racial exploitation, and personal ambitions come to the fore. Amid the difficulties and a fair bit of humor, arises a serious clash involving hotheaded young trumpet player Levee (Yao Dogbe) who wants to alter musical arrangements on the titular song.
Playing blues icon Ma Rainey wasn’t on Haskins’s radar. Because the bulk of her work is in musical theater, Haskins never foresaw being tapped to do a Wilson play.
“It’s kind of like Shakespeare. Not restrictive but respected; not everyone gets a ticket to the party. So, I figured that I just wouldn’t pursue that,” she says matter-of-factly.
However, fate would dictate differently. Haskins and director Brown are longtime friends and collaborators. They recently worked together on “The Color Purple” at Chicago’s prestigious Goodman Theatre where Haskins played Sofia, another powerful Black woman who, not unlike Ma, is navigating life in a patriarchal white world.
When the opportunity came up to play Ma at Round House, Brown encouraged Haskins to audition. She did and got the part. “I’m so grateful to be working with a wonderful director like Lili-Anne, especially during my introduction to Wilson’s work. He is a theater god, and I’m swept every day.”
And is it special to be queer and playing queer? “For me, it’s special to play any role where there is an impassioned Black woman who sticks to her guns and fights for the things she deserves. Her sexuality is the icing on the cake.”
The production adheres to Wilson’s text and the text describes a woman who is in a relationship with another woman. Though her sexuality is provocative, it’s not the only thing about her that’s compelling. She’s also portrayed as an artist, businesswoman, and a loving aunt.
Haskins, a New York-based actor who made her name on the Chicago theater scene, grew up in Detroit. At 12, she became involved with the Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit; after high school she went on to earn a BFA at Detroit’s Wayne State University. Detroit is also where Haskins learned storytelling: “It’s very natural for a Detroit native to greet people on the street. There’s an expectation to be open to someone else’s story and to share your own. I’ve done this many times.”
Queer characters are famously underrepresented in Wilson’s work. “I see that, but do we really know for sure? After the first day’s read through of the play, some of the actors, for different reasons, wondered if in addition to Ma, perhaps one or two of the other characters might be queer too. Now wouldn’t that be interesting? That’s something I’d like to see.”
Blade Foundation to host fundraiser in Rehoboth on Sept. 12
New book examines fashionista Audrey Smaltz’s fabulous life
Actress takes on bisexual ‘Ma’ Rainey in new Round House production
‘Here the Whole Time’ delivers queer coming-of-age comedy
Pentagon expands testosterone screening as trans troops face hormone therapy restrictions
The mastery of love
Enlarging the Supreme Court keeps making more sense
Gloria Steinem dies at 92
Trans people need a politics of ordinary life
