Arts & Entertainment
March on Washington Film Festival boasts stellar queer content
Hybrid format features films, panel discussions, theater, and VR lab
Kevin Kodama, a 26-year-old, queer, Asian-American filmmaker, was saddened and angered by the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. Then, he was a student studying film at San Francisco State University. “One of my professors encouraged me to channel my feelings {about the hate crimes} into a short film,” Kodama told the Blade.
Kodama took his professor’s advice. He wrote and directed “Shikata Ga Nai,” a poignant, compelling fantasy romance, set in a Japanese concentration camp where a lesbian couple attempts to reconcile their relationship as ghosts.
Kodama is one of the many filmmakers, theater legends and civil rights heros whose work will be showcased and honored at the March on Washington Film Festival (MOWFF) 2022 from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2.
MOWFF, in a hybrid in person and streaming format, will feature films, panel discussions, theatrical performances and the first-ever VR {virtual reality} Equity Lab in the Nation’s Capital.
From its honorees to its emerging filmmakers, the Festival has a strong queer quotient.
In its 10th year, the Festival celebrates African-American legends of theater and film who have advanced civil rights. Its theme this year is “STORY, STAGE & SCREEN.” To purchase tickets to the Festival, click here.
MOWFF was founded in 2013 on the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. Now in its 10th year, the Festival uses the power of film, music, scholarship to tell untold stories of the unsung heroes of the American Civil Rights movement. The Festival shares these narratives to connect the past to the present and the future. For information about the Festival go to: marchonwashingtonfilmfestival.org.
MOWFF is committed to highlighting stories at the intersection of racial and LGBTQIA+ justice, David Andrusia, executive director of the Festival, told the Blade.
“We want to correct stories that have been mistold,” Andrusia, who is gay, said, “Too many are silenced and kept from telling their stories.”
This year, the Festival will bestow the John Lewis Lifetime Legacy Award to Rep. Barbara Lee, a founding member and a Vice Chair of the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus and the Chair of the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus.
MOWFF2022’s other honorees are George C. Wolfe, Tony-winning director of “Angels in America” whose upcoming film “Bayard Rustin” celebrates the gay rights legend, and pioneering lesbian publicist and producer Irene Gandy, a two-time Tony Award-winner.
Lewis, Wolfe and Gandy will be honored on the Festival’s opening night.
Gandy, 78, is glad that MOWFF is being held now. “So that young people can learn about and remember Black community activists and artists who’ve fought for civil rights,” she told the Blade.
It’s important that people not forget that Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson and other artists were part of the 1963 March on Washington, Gandy said. “We have to honor the legacy and continue the activism of these artists,” she added.
Gandy doesn’t go into meetings thinking “I’m Black” or “I’m gay.” “That deafeats everything for everybody. It crowds all the good things out.”
There’s a long way to go, but things are changing, Gandy, who for over 50 years has been the only Black female press agent member of the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers (ATPAM).
“There are more Black shows now – with Black actors and produces,” she said, “with more Black managers making decisions.”
In addition to being a groundbreaking press agent and producer, Gandy is a fashionista. In 2008, she became the first female press agent to be immortalized with a Sardi’s caricature. Known for her furs, in 2015, Gandy launched
a signature collection featured in “Vogue” and her Lady Irene Fur line debuted earlier this year.
On a recent evening as she walked out of a theater on to Broadway, Gandy had an awesome encounter with a father and his five-year-old child. “The child was trans,” she said, “the child was biologically a boy. But when the Dad called him by a boy’s name, the child said ‘I’m a girl.’”
“This little, trans person didn’t know who I was – that I had won the Tonys,” Gandy said, “but she said to me ‘I love your style!’”
If they know who they are, everyone has a story to tell, she added.
The stories to be highlighted at the Festival include “Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back,” an intimate portrait of the trailblazing Black entertainer; “Mankiller,” a documentary about Wilma Mankiller, who became the Cherokee Nation’s first Principal Chief in 1985; and “The Defenders,” about lawyers who fought for civil rights in Mississippi in the early years of the civil rights movement.
After his meeting with his professor, Kodama had the idea of doing a story set in the concentration camps where Japanese Americans were interred during World War II.
“It’s a way of bridging the history of anti-Asian policies of that time with the anti-Asian racism and hate crimes of today,” he said.
Queer people who were interred during the War had to be closeted. “For most of the decades after the War, queer people were left out of stories told about the camps,” Kodama said.
“Because of homophobia – discomfort with queerness,” he added, “people didn’t talk about it. Same-sex couples had to pass as friends.”
“Shikata Ga Nai” was filmed on the site of one of the camps – Manzanar in Inyo County, California (a National Historic Site run by the National Park Service). “One of the nice things about my film is it will get people to talk about it {queer people in the camps} who haven’t talked about it.” (The film will be shown at MOWFF as part of the Student and Emerging Filmmaker Competitions.)
Derrick L. Middleton, a talented, 35-year-old, Black, gay filmmaker, uses his art to tell stories.
Middleton, born in Harlem in New York City, knew as a little boy that he was different. “I wasn’t yet labeled as ‘gay,’ but I felt like I didn’t fit in,” he told the Blade.
“It felt unnatural to try to be masculine in the way I was expected to be,” he added.
He, like other Black queer men, ran up against hyper-masculinity, when he went to a barbershop.
“Barbershops are critically important to the Black community,” Middleton said, “I want to honor them.”
When Black people were enslaved, one of the few things they could learn was how to cut hair, Middleton said. “When they were freed, owning a barbershop was one of the few businesses they could run,” he added.
But, heteronormity rules in many Black barbershops. Subtle or overt anti-queer slur often make you feel unsafe if you’re queer and Black in a Black barbershop.
“I had already come out to my family and friends,” Middleton said, “but I felt, to be safe, I had to go back into the closet when I went to a the barbershop.”
One day, he became angry and scared when he went to a Black barbershop. “The barber told me that he didn’t cut hair for sissies,” Middleton said.
He was so frightened that he couldn’t think of anything to say and ran out of the barbershop.
Out of this experience, Middleton made “Shape Up: Gay in the Black Barbershop,” an eye-opening, engrossing, moving documentary short about the stories of himself and other queer Black men in Black barbershops. The film premiered in 2016 at the White House and was awarded the Grand Prize for Emerging Documentary by the March on Washington Film Festival.
“I never thought that I, a boy who grew up in Harlem, would get an award at a White House ceremony when the country had a Black president,” Middleton said, “It was a dream come true.”
This year, Middleton has been selected for a VR Equity Lab and Fellowship. His work will be showcased in the Festival’s VR Equity Lab. Middleton’s VR Equity Lab project “Shape Up: Gay in the Black Barbershop” (The Series). The series is a spinoff that takes viewers on a journey to barbershops from different countries in the African Diaspora, using 360-degree video and animated interactive scenes to give viewers an immersive experience from the perspective of LGBTQ people.
“I hope that the Series will be mainstreamed on a platform like Hulu or Netflix,” Middleton said, “so that people who aren’t able to access it through VR will be able to see it.”
Celebrity News
Why Michelle Visage needs you to get ‘PrEP Wise’
‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ judge speaks about new ViiV Healthcare campaign
If you ask an LGBTQ person what Michelle Visage is known for, you’re likely to get a few similar answers. Most people will say that they know her as the co-judge on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” with the woman serving looks (and scathing critiques) for more than a decade on this seminal program. Others may bring up her time awing audiences on the West End, or her initial star turn in the hit girl group Seduction. There are a few answers you may get when asking about Michelle Visage, but there’s one part of the performer’s career that not enough people bring up today: her advocacy.
Before the record deals and hit TV shows, Michelle Visage was a tough teenager from New Jersey. A girl who knew she was meant for fame but was still figuring out how to get there. Eventually, the search for stardom brought her to 1980s New York, a thriving home of queer nightlife that taught Visage how her voice could be used to fight against hatred. And while she flexes that skill every day as a fierce advocate, she’s excited to be louder than ever through ViiV Healthcare’s new ‘PrEP Wisdom Campaign.’
Michelle Visage sat down with the Los Angeles Blade to discuss this campaign and how it feels to speak up about this important issue. But before we could get to the present, she stressed that if people wanted to know about her current work, they first had to understand how it all began.
Visage detailed her youth in New Jersey, her no-nonsense parents, and the many times she snuck into nightclubs hoping to be ‘discovered.’ It was in these clubs that she found the thriving ballroom scene of 1980s New York, saying, “I felt like Dorothy [from the ‘Wizard of Oz’] when she clicked her heels! [Except] Dorothy clicked her heels three times, and she ended up in Kansas — I ended up on Christopher Street with 30 or 40 of the weirdest, craziest looking misfits I’d ever seen in my life.” Michelle smiled widely as she remembered those early moments. “I was like, ‘Oh my god … I think I found my people.”
“I met Willie Ninja and Caesar Ninja Valentino, and they took me in as one of their own and started teaching me how to vogue. And that’s how life began for me in the ballroom!” She began to walk as a member of the House of Valentino — specifically Face, Body, and Femme Vogue — and found a second home amidst this thriving subculture of marginalized artists. “When I didn’t have anybody or a group or a clique to speak of, the queer scene in New York City took me in as one of theirs — and I became ‘Michelle Magnifique.’”
Through this community, Visage got to see the birth of our modern LGBTQ rights movement — as well as just how much the AIDS crisis would come to terrorize these people she’d begun to call her family.
“Because I was so deep in this scene, I was affected greatly by the AIDS crisis and the lack of any kind of support from anything around us,“ said Michelle, speaking candidly about her many days spent at the bedsides of those suffering from this disease, acting as a source of comfort for folks whose blood family had abandoned them long ago. “I was standing by their side and holding their hand and being with them … I didn’t know what I was doing. But I knew that I needed to show up, and I knew that I needed to be there.”
Even when her career took Michelle from New York, she always carried those memories of standing by community members when nobody else would. This, when paired with her massive singing and acting talents, is what made her one of pop culture’s staunchest advocates for LGBTQ rights in the 90s and early 2000s. This earned her a massive queer following, and today, it’s what makes her the perfect partner for ViiV’s new PrEP Wisdom Campaign.
“Viiv Healthcare is the only pharmaceutical company solely focused on preventing, treating, and ultimately curing HIV,” Michelle explained. “Their goal is to help end the HIV epidemic for all — and that, to me, is music to my ears.”
It’s a goal that’s only become more important since the company was founded back in 2009. The only large-scale pharmaceutical company focused on ending the HIV epidemic, ViiV, not only fights cultural stigma but also saves thousands of lives daily by connecting folks to the treatment and prevention resources they need. Especially as we’re seeing numerous states — including California — begin to slash HIV funding, their work through campaigns like this one is becoming more important than ever.
“The PrEP Wisdom Campaign, first and foremost, is intended to encourage conversations between people who could benefit from PrEP, and [why they should] talk to their doctors to help determine which injectable PrEP might be right for them,” said Visage. She discussed how the campaign is information-oriented, with ViiV developing easy-to-understand pathways for folks to become more aware of injectable PrEP services as well as general HIV/AIDS-related resources.
“More than 2 million Americans could benefit from PrEP to help prevent HIV [according to the] CDC — yet only 25 percent of them are currently using it!” She understands that there were many things holding people back from getting PrEP, ranging from cultural stigma to discriminatory doctors to a lack of awareness that these resources even exist. But she emphasizes that people cannot let social judgment hold them back from their health and safety! “If you’re not clicking with your health care provider, please find a new one. You don’t have to settle … there are plenty of people to choose from. Plenty of healthcare providers, plenty of doctors who want to work with you, who want to give you the information about PrEP, who want you to be on PrEP so you are protected.”
“Listen, we have come a long way since I started [back in] 1986], and we’ve got so much further to go,” Visage said, reflecting on her lifelong role as an HIV advocate, first as a teenager, and now as an acclaimed performer. But while she may have grown since then, she still carries the commitment to fighting against injustice that the queer community of 80s New York instilled in her. “I will fight forever on this platform. [Discrimination hasn’t] changed, so I don’t plan on changing.”
Michelle Visage knows that change doesn’t happen by being silent — it happens by staying informed and keeping yourself healthy so that you can speak out for what you know is right. In honor of the many lives she fought for in 1980s New York, Visage wants to help as many people as she can today get the PrEP resources they need. And through her new PrEP Wisdom campaign with ViiV, she’s excited to do exactly that.
Hagerstown Hopes held the Hagerstown Pride Festival outside Hub City Brewery on Saturday, May 30.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
You’re all geared up.
You’ve got your best parade-walking shoes, your coolest tee, your most-comfortable shorts, and a rainbow flag to carry. You’re set for Pride, but before you go, try one of these great new books about LGBTQ life and history.
After the parade, where will you end up? A place to talk your experience over, to re-hash things for the next parade? Then you may need “The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America’s Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces” by Rachel Karp (Beacon Press, $29.95).
Lesbian bars, says Karp, are more than just places to drink. They’re also places to find community, and to organize. For many, she says, they are “sanctuaries,” as they have been for at least a century, and this book introduces you to some of the people who run the establishments, the things they do to support their patrons, and the 100-year-plus bravery that it took to own, run, and enter a lesbian bar.
If you had to name a gay icon, there are probably quite a few who come to mind. So read “Without Prejudice: My Life as a Gay Judge” by Harvey Brownstone (ECW Press, $21.95) and add another name to your list.
This memoir, written by Canada’s first openly gay judge, takes readers from Brownstone’s childhood to his life as a lawyer, then to his work within the justice system in Ontario, and beyond, to his current career. This is a surprising, informative book that gives you an idea what gay life is like, north of our uppermost borders, then and now.
Pride is a celebration, an event, but it also demands a peek backwards, and in “The LGBTQ Almanac: 500 Years of Queer Culture in American History” by Deborah G. Felder (Visible Ink Press, $39.95), you’ll get a wide look at the pioneers, allies, policy, and gay life over the course of the last five centuries. Want to know more about religion in the gay community? It’s in here, along with celebrities, presidents, science, business, and more. This is the kind of book that settles bets. It’s one you want to have in any room of your home because it’s comprehensive and perfectly browse-able for all of its 600-plus pages.
And finally, here’s a book to read and think about: “No Fats No Fems: A Guide to Queer Empathy and Unpacking Prejudice” by Max Hovey (HarperOne, $19.99). How do you eliminate hateful, hurtful words, aimed at gay people – by gay people? What kind of stereotypes do we carry, unintentionally? This book takes those things out into the daylight by talking honestly and thoughtfully about them, as well as other issues. It’s a book to have when doubts creep in, when you need a new way of thinking or a different direction, or when you just want something different to read.
And if these great books aren’t enough, head to your favorite bookstore or library and ask for books that you can read before Pride or after. And happy Pride!
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