The Ups And Downs Of A Gay & Lesbian Film Festival

The New York International Festival of Lesbian and Gay Films, the culmination of a two-year search and acquisition project, comes at a most timely moment--the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village (in which dozens of gay men, many of them drag queens, fought the police back in a raid on a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn) out of which emerged the gay liberation movement.

The festival, an outgrowth of that movement, and the first of its kind in nearly two and a half years, will screen 45 movies, in 77 screenings, during its June 7-20 [1989 ] run at the Biograph Cinema (255 West 57th Street, at Broadway). "We planned it for the month of June," said festival producer Susan Horowitz, the owner of Tower Press, a printing firm that publishes the annual Gay Pride Guide, "to tie into the other cultural emphasis around Stonewall."

While she busied herself with the task of lining up financial backers for the festival within the gay community, her partner John Lewis, who, quipped Horowitz, calls himself "an old movie queen" because of "his passion" for film, "traveled to Berlin and to other film festivals, and was able to see a lot of material."

One of the gems acquired is the 1989 British documentary Desire by Stuart Marshall which discusses through on-camera interviews, stills, and archival footage homosexuality in Germany before and during the Nazi period. (It will be shown opening night for a special screening to benefit the Gay Community Center on 13th Street.)

Said Horowitz: "We had a commitment about a film on Langston Hughes's life by an English filmmaker [Isaac Julien's Looking for Langston] that we were very excited about being able to find on such short notice but it was taken away from us because they decided to hold out for the New York Film Festival which is certainly their prerogative."

The painstaking efforts of Susan Horowitz and John Lewis have paid off in media attention and positive feedback from "the gay community at large," beamed Horowitz. However, there is a downside, too. The New Festival, the sponsors of the event, have sent out via mail, 25,000 copies of the catalogue. Only 32 have been returned requesting that the recipient be removed from the mailing list because they felt that the catalogue--which others have praised for its graphic design--was "disgusting." Horowitz and her cohorts were dismayed to the point of shedding tears, despite the fact that this manifestation of gay self-hatred represented only "a very small percentage."  It became evident to Horowitz that 20 years after Stonewall, there was still "a long way to go" in bolstering gay pride. "That's why a film festival is essential, a community center is essential in every city of every type."


This slightly condensed article was originally published in the Philadelphia Gay News (June 9, 1989).