Screaming Queens with a talkback with Susan Stryker
Thursday, October 19, 2017 7:00 PM
Thursday, October 19, 2017 9:30 PM
The Reel Queer Film Series at
Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center presents a free screening of Screaming
Queens on October 19, 2017 at 7pm. The screening is followed by a talkback
with film director Susan Stryker.
EMMY Award-winning Screaming
Queens tells the little-known story of the first known act of collective,
violent resistance to the social oppression of queer people in the United
States—a 1966 riot in San Francisco’s impoverished Tenderloin neighborhood,
three years before the famous riot at New York’s Stonewall Inn.
Screaming Queens
introduces viewers to street queens, cops, and activist civil rights ministers
who recall the riot and paint a vivid portrait of the wild transgender scene in
1960s San Francisco. Integrating the riot’s story into the broader fabric of
American life, the documentary connects the event to urban renewal, anti-war
activism, civil rights, and sexual liberation. With enticing archival footage
and period music, this unknown story is dramatically brought back to life.
About Susan Stryker:
Susan Stryker is Associate
Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Director of the Institute for LGBT
Studies at University of Arizona. She is a multiple award-winning author,
editor, and filmmaker whose credits include the Emmy-winning documentary Screaming
Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, the massive, two-volume Transgender
Studies Reader, the introductory textbook Transgender History, and
popular nonfiction works such as Queer Pulp: Perverse Passions from the
Golden Age of the Paperback and Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer
Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. Susan also worked for several years
as the Executive Director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.
Awards & Accolades for Screaming
Queens
EMMY AWARD
“ … [ Screaming Queens ]
shows how in just two short years transgender activism helped transform San
Francisco culture in subtle and profound ways and presents reflective comments
from the Compton’s Cafeteria subjects who bravely ushered in a controversial
revolution that continues today. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED”—EMRO (Educational Media
Reviews Online)
“If there was one film I’d want
to show to my students to inspire them both to do and to make history, Screaming
Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria is it (and it clocks just under an
hour!). Trans historian and activist Susan Stryker dives into the archives and
emerges with a story about the first collective militant queer resistance to
police harassment, not at the Stonewall Bar in New York in 1969, but at Gene Compton’s
Cafeteria in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. It's a story
that is at the foundation of everything from glam rock to lesbian separatism,
gay struggles based on civil rights activism to squatters and housing rights
agitation (and therefore right for classes in everything from cinema to
political theory). It’s also a story of unlikely heroes and heroines, putting
passion and power at the center of an emergent queer historiography.” —Amy
Villarejo, Associate Professor in Film, Director of the Feminist, Gender, &
Sexuality Studies Program, Cornell University
“ Screaming Queens should
be a mandatory part of every inclusive classroom curriculum. Stryker and
Silverman’s masterful documentary uncovers a little known, yet incredibly
powerful part of LGBTQ history. This film is a story about hope, possibility,
and justice that makes history come alive for students and scholars alike. The
voices from our distant past will inspire viewers to uncover and reclaim their
own histories and narrate other stories that have yet to be told.” —Kristopher
Wells, Associate Editor, Journal of LGBT Youth, University of Alberta
This is a sober social event, no
alcohol will be served.
Appetizers will be provided by Centro.
The Reel Queer Film
Series is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state
agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment
for the Arts, a federal agency.
Location
Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center