In 1977, WORD IS OUT: STORIES OF SOME OF OUR LIVES (133 min) broke screen silence as the first nonfiction feature directed by gay filmmakers - in this case, a collective of six filmmakers brought together by documentarian Peter Adair, called the Mariposa Film Group, with the intention of creating images and archiving the stories of their intersecting communities.
In this class, we’ll learn about the many impacts of the film on queer lives in the late 1970s, and its legacy as an essential early archive of queer life. We’ll also discuss how these filmmakers sought to queer the documentary form itself through a radically collaborative approach to filmmaking and archiving of gay life, opening space for decades of by-queers, for-queers documentaries to come!
This class will be taught by MMU Instructor Max Swanson, a filmmaker/performer, writer, educator, and organizer based in Portland, OR.
Class size will be limited to 18.
Questions? Email us at education@moviemadness.org