Proud Colors

Rainbow Pride (Marie-Josee Ferron: documentary; color; 60 mins.;2006)

San Francisco brings to mind many images, both pleasant and not so pleasant--cable cars, steep hills, the Golden Gate Bridge, Harvey Milk's assassination, the occasional earthquake. Add one more image to the mix--this one for the pleasant column--the rainbow flag, a symbol of gay pride and empowerment. It was created by Gilbert Baker, a self-described "drag queen from way back."
Baker's flag and its impact on gay culture is the subject of an hour-long documentary, Rainbow Pride, that was filmed mostly in San Francisco and Key West, Florida, and first aired on public television three years ago.
In 1977, when Baker was commissioned to design a flag to be hung from lampposts during that year's pride parade, no one could have imagined that one day its colors would become such an international symbol for the GLBT community (thanks to New York's "Stonewall 25" celebration that featured a mile-long version of the flag).
The hand-made flag originally had eight colors (each signifying a different theme). Two of them (hot pink and turquoise) were later dropped because, as one interviewee pointed out, those colors were not on the palette of flag makers.
Baker, who knew the late openly gay politician Harvey Milk, gives him credit for inspiring the flag. "Harvey's whole message, his whole life was all about gay people should be visible and that we should come out of the closet. So the flag really fit with that in terms of it being a visibility tool."
That visibility, however, can be a double-edged sword. For gays and lesbians, it becomes, as one man in the film pointed out, a "universal Red Cross" sign, a marker that says here is a safe haven when trouble arises. Homophobes also know what the colors symbolize; for them it becomes a red flag, a signal that here is a potential target for gay bashing.
Rainbow Pride, beautifully shot and edited, with an excellent musical soundtrack, tells the story of the flag's creation without voice-over narration. It relies solely on images (some of it archival) and the voices of those on-camera. The Stonewall Riots, Anita Bryant, Harvey Milk are seamlessly interwoven in the overall "narrative." These moments add significance to the rainbow flag because they are milestones in the evolution of gay pride and although the colors have been used in tacky ways--such as on key chains and license plates--their popularity arises from a need for an oppressed people to feel good about themselves and each other. Or as Ann Northrop, a longtime activist, says in the film, "It's still a brilliant signifier and connector and identifier of us as a special tribe of people."