*Feb 4, 11, 18, & 25. All screenings are free to the public
and presented for educational purposes.
Seating is limited.
DOORS OPEN 15 MINUTES BEFORE START TIME
Saturday, February 4, 2023
Girlz to MEN: A documentary about trans men (2019)
Start time: 3:00pm - Runtime: 24:25min
This documentary explores the authentic stories of Black Trans men,
their joys and challenges;
Saturday, February 4, 2023
OUT: THE GLENN BURKE STORY (2010)
Start time: 3:45pm - Runtime: 1:12min
The Center is proud to present this documentary that tells the story of Oakland native, sports legend, and our clinic's namesake, Glenn Burke.
It's a baffling and depressing thought. Even with thousands of professional athletes competing in baseball, basketball, football and hockey over the past several years - many of whom are almost undoubtedly homosexual - not a single one has played a single game as a Black and openly gay man.
Burke was a Oakland native and basketball and baseball star at Berkeley High in the late 1960s and early 1970's.
"Out: The Glenn Burke Story," delves deeply into the meteoric rise to the pros during the 1970's and the tragic ramifications when he stopped being guarded about his private life, becoming the first Major League baseball Player to come out of the closet.
Saturday, February 11, 2023
JUMPIN' THE BROOM (2006)
Start time: 4:00pm Run time: 28min
In Memory of Hazel Terry-Wesson - National HIV/AIDS Advocate
Oakland based filmmaker Debra Wilson, explores how intimate stories with gay and lesbians couples reveal the historical role of family, marriage and commitment in the African American Community.
Debra Wilson will also be present for Q&A.
Saturday, February 11, 2023
TOUNGES UNTIED (1989)
Start time: 5:30pm Run time: 1:34min
In Memory Of artist/activist, Blackberri & Filmmaker Marlon Riggs
Filmed in Oakland, San Francisco and New York, and made, in director Marlon Riggs’s own words, to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” this radical blend of documentary and performance defies the stigmas surrounding Black gay sexuality in the belief that, as long as shame prevails, liberation cannot be possible. Through music and dance, words and poetry by such pathbreaking writers as Essex Hemphill and Joseph Beam—and by turns candid, humorous, and heartbreaking interviews with queer African American men—Tongues Untied gives voice to what it means to live as an outsider in both a Black community rife with homophobia and a largely white gay subculture poisoned by racism. A lightning rod in the culture wars of the 1980s that incited a right-wing furor over public funding for the arts, the film has lost none of its life-affirming resonance.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF DISCO (2017)
Start time: 3:00pm Run time: 34:27
In the four plus decades since disgruntled Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl commandeered a baseball stadium for a Disco Demolition Night where fans tossed around homophobic and racist epithets while destroying records, there’s been notable social progress.
This progress is the lens that makes Noah Lefevre’s Polyphonic video essay The Untold History of Disco, and other investigations into the racial and sexual underpinnings of disco possible.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
CAN YOU FEEL IT: THE BLACK QUEER ORIGINS OF HOUSE & TECHNO (2018)
Start time: 4pm Run time: 60min
This documentary takes an in-depth look at one of the pillars of a scene that has gone from a Black and Latino gay underground movement to a global phenomenon, tells the story of the origins and development of the music itself, how clubs became the most important cultural entertainment spaces of our era and finally the extraordinary rise of the DJ from awkward sideman to the world's biggest music stars. Our cast list boasts a defining list of dance's pioneers, innovators and biggest stars alongside a killer soundtrack. As Marshall Jefferson says, "You gotta have house music all night long".
HOUSE MUSIC HISTORY
Saturday, February 25, 2023
PARIS IS BURNING (1990)
Start time 3:00pm: Run time: 76min
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag ball scene. Made over seven years, Paris Is Burning offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion “houses,” from fierce contests for trophies, to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia and transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women—including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza—Paris Is Burning brings it, celebrating the joy of movement, the force of eloquence, and the draw of community.
Saturday, February 25, 2023
THE DEATH & LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON (2017)
Run time 5:00pm: 1:45min
Transgender people often endure disproportionate violence simply for their gender identity.
Imagine being an out, trans activist … in the 1960s.
Marsha P. Johnson dedicated her life to advocating for LGBT rights. Johnson was a leader in the Stonewall uprising and she helped found the Gay Liberation Front and the one of the world’s first trans-rights organizations, S.T.A.R.
In 1992, Johnson went missing. Her body was later found in the Hudson River, and police thought she had committed suicide. But friends suspected foul play. Now a new documentary explores Johnson’s work and mysterious death.