a&e features
Reel Affirmations LGBT Film Festival returns Oct. 13-16
Annual event to showcase 40 films from six continents
A scene from ‘Retake,’ which filmmaker Nick Corporon calls ‘a suspenseful love story.’ (Photo courtesy Reel Affirmations)
Reel Affirmations
Oct. 10-14
GALA Hispanic Theatre/Tivoli Theatre
3333 14th St., N.W.
Human Rights Campaign
1640 Rhode Island Ave., N.W.
Full schedule, tickets and more at reelaffirmations.org
Reel Affirmations returns Oct. 13-16. Billed as Washington’s only international LGBT film festival, this year’s schedule includes about 40 new queer features, shorts and documentaries from across the country and around the world.
The festival kicks off with a VIP preview of “Retake” by filmmaker Nick Corporon. The director of the award-winning short “Barbie Boy” says his latest film is, “a suspenseful love story about Jonathan (Tuc Watkins), a mysterious and lonely guy, who hires a young male hustler to help him recreate a road trip from his past.”
Corporon says the movie rises from two very different personal interests: people who live in the past and the desert.
“I’m obsessed with characters who are stuck in the past, always looking backward, pining over what was and what could have been,” he says. ”And, being a Mid-Western boy, I love the iconography of the desert. So, I took those ideas and mashed them together into a road trip love story. Thankfully, two-person road trip movies are less expensive and easier to shoot.”
What proved to be a challenge on the set was controlling his lead actor.
“Tuc Watkins just turned 50 years old recently, but on set he ate like a 15-year-old,” the director says. “I just don’t understand how he has the body he does because we’d always catch him sneaking off to eat cheeseburgers in between set ups. I’d catch him with a bag of fries and say, ‘You realize we’re shooting your nude scenes in two days, right?’ He responded with ‘I know my body, we’ll be fine.’ And we were.”
On Friday night, the festival features “LOEV” a film that Festival Director Kimberley Bush has been pursuing for more than a year. Bush describes it as a “glorious film” and sadly notes that lead actor Dhruv Ganesh died of tuberculosis shortly after filming.
A scene from ‘LOEV,’ a film Reel Affirmations Director Kimberly Bush calls ‘Glorious.’ (Photo courtesy Reel Affirmations)
Indian filmmaker Sudhanshu Saria says that his movie, “is an honest, fragile film about a road-trip between men where they examine the boundaries between friendship and love. It’s set in India so the politics of the place become important given our government’s recent re-criminalization of homosexuality, making it punishable by life imprisonment.”
Saria says the impulse to make this movie came out of personal circumstances and his frustration with the Indian movie industry.
“Honestly, it came from heartbreak,” he says. “I fell for someone who didn’t like me back and instead of going to a therapist or a strip club, I decided to write about it. And I was only able to write about it honestly because I knew there was no shot in hell of this gay-themed, no-stars film finding any financing or actors in India. I could just be brutally honest.”
To his surprise, he was able to locate both money and actors: “Oh well. Two years later, here we are, but if you ask me why I became a filmmaker, well, that credit would go squarely to writer and director Mira Nair. I was perfectly happy sitting on a couch and watching films until I heard her manifesto on, ‘If we don’t tell our stories, no one will.’ So here I am, telling my stories.”
On Saturday, Reel Affirmations turns to three exciting selections of shorts, each loosely grouped around a common theme. The first, called Spectrum, takes a look at LGBT folk who don’t fit neatly into conventional ideas of gender, aging or identity. It kicks off with “Dawn,” the latest film from filmmaker Jake Graf, a transgender man living in London.
“The film is a simple story, set at dawn on a bench on the outskirts of London,” Graf says. “The lead is a trans woman who has been told all her life that she is ugly, too tall, not pretty or womanly enough, so I thought it would be interesting to pair her with a blind man. Unable to judge her by her appearance, he simply takes her for the woman that she is inside, without the stereotypical ideas and perceptions of beauty.”
The second slate of shorts is called Swipe Right, with films dedicated to new beginnings and sudden transformations. The films include the comedy “Spunkle.” If you don’t know what the title means, director Lisa Donato says you may need to consult the Urban Dictionary.
The third slate is called So Long and Farewell, because as Bush notes, “this selection of short films plays on the theme of how everything — even love — comes to an end.”
The Saturday centerpiece feature is the powerful documentary “Free Cece!,” the story of CeCe McDonald, a black trans woman who was unfairly jailed after fighting back against an attacker. Director Jacqueline Garas, known for her work on the PBS series “In the Life,” had a life-changing moment when she heard trans activist Laverne Cox speak about McDonald’s story at the 2013 GLAAD Awards.
“I was shocked that no one had actually covered her story,” she says. “I said to myself, ‘Why haven’t you done something?’ I felt compelled. I think as white people when we see racial injustice, we need to do all we can to make a difference. This was my way of doing what I could.”
The adults-only Saturday after-hours feature takes audiences on a decidedly different journey. According to German filmmaker Hendrik Schäfer, “I wanted to make a film that asks what intimacy means and whether our exposed genitals or our personal stories are more intimate.” The ensuing film, “Seducing Mr. Bluefrog: NSFW” is “a portrait of an online exhibitionist who goes by the name of Bluefrog and who doesn’t want to reveal anything personal but his nudity. He gets to direct his own porn scene and it turns out to be a much different experience than expected for both the subject and the filmmaker.”
The line-up on Sunday, the closing day of the Festival, starts with “Suicide Kale,” an intense dark mumblecore comedy written by Brittani Nichols and directed by Carly Usdin. Nichols says that she and her friends were looking for a project to work on together and that her screenplay was sparked by a chance conversation with Lindsay Hicks, who became one of the film’s stars.
“Emotional chaos ensues over the course of one lunch when a new couple, Jasmine and Penn, find an anonymous suicide note at the home of Billie and Jordan, the happiest couple they know,” she says.
Friends and colleagues are also at the core of “Strike a Pose,” a new documentary that tells the stories of the seven male dancers who performed with Madonna on the ground-breaking “Blond Ambition Tour” and who appeared with her in the infamous documentary “Truth or Dare.”
Co-directors Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan tracked down the six surviving dancers to tell the world their stories. (Gabriel Trupin died in 1995, but is represented in the movie by his mother.) Zwaan says that the movie is “the dramatic story of these seven fierce male dancers who showed the world how to vogue. At its core, our film focuses on a paradox: onstage, the dancers were paragons of pride and self-expression, but in reality their lives were clouded by compromise and secrecy. “Strike a Pose” is a film about overcoming shame and the courage it takes to be who you are.” It screens Sunday, Oct. 16 at 3 p.m.
Each of these filmmakers is excited to be part of the Reel Affirmation Film Festival. They are thrilled to find new audiences for their work and they are grateful for the camaraderie of their fellow artists. But even more importantly, they rely on Bush and her stalwart band of volunteers to take a risk on independent queer filmmakers and their quirky visionary films.
As Sudhanshu Saria says, “LOEV is unusual, I know that. We worked hard to make it that way. It resists the obvious stereotyping and classifications people seek: there’s no shower scenes, no nubile twinks, no coming-out-to-dad or suicides and it doesn’t fit the clichés of Indian art-house films either: no musical numbers and no poverty porn. Films like this will always require champions who see the intent in there and who understand it for what it is and who showcase it for audiences to discover.”
A scene from ‘LOEV.’ (Photo courtesy Reel Affirmations)
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
a&e features
Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
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Report: Grenell wants Russian ambassadorship
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D.C. is the place for the Democratic Socialists of America
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