During the early 1990s, San Francisco was the epicentre of body modification and gender nonconformity, with transgender pioneers like Patrick Califia and Tala Brandeis fighting for visibility, alongside the voice of a bold S/M community.


Michelle Handelman’s provocative and pioneering documentary 

 captures these queer outlaws in their zeitgeist moment, shot on digital video with an unfiltered rawness that mirrors the activism of the era. From pushy bottoms to macho femmes, 

 immerses the viewer in the San Francisco leather dyke scene, shattering assumptions about gender and lesbian sexuality, while broadening the discussion about personal expressions of eroticism and their political implications. In the 1990s, 

 was attacked in congress by the American Family Association for its depictions of radical lesbian sexuality.


Twenty-five years later, the film has become recognized as a treasured historical document of a movement that tore down barriers of sex, gender, and activism.

BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes & Sadomasochism

Two San Francisco FTM transexuals sit in their back yard and discuss their daddy/boy relationship, transgender life, love, tattoos and tomato plants.

Boys in the Backyard 

This work by LA-based artist Rhys Ernst invokes the story of Lou Sullivan, trans man and AIDS activist largely responsible for establishing the distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation. Cut with images of Ernst’s own examination of this figure and trans history, the video is structured by the search for and desire to identify transmasculine elders and an intergenerational exploration of gay transmasculine identity. Utilizing interview footage, excerpts of Sullivan’s book “Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual," VHS gay porn, and Grindr chats, 

 is a meditation on the life of the late trans man and AIDS activist that explores the bodily intersection of transmasculine gay and HIV+ identity.

 a program of seven videos that bring together charged moments and memories from their personal perspective amidst the public history of HIV/AIDS.

Dear Lou Sullivan

A well-placed kielbasa stirs up comic confusion from Castro Street to the inner sanctum of the Left-handed Lithuania Lesbian Collective in late Bay Area filmmaker Ingrid Wilhite’s playful spoof of gender and sexual boundaries.

Fun With A Sausage

 explores phenomena of gender fluidity at the end of the millennium in the Bay Area, California. It is a film about cyborgs, people who alter their bodies and minds with new technologies and chemistry, with an emphasis on biological women who use the male sexual hormone testosterone. 

We get to know San Francisco’s leading gender mixers: Max Wolf Valerio, who reads from his book, Max, A Man; Jordy Jones and his net art; Texas Tomboy and his video art; Stafford, who explores new business venues and, together with Jordy Jones, organizes “Club Confidential,” the world’s leading gender bender event. We meet Hida, an intersexed woman, who happily inhabits the middle ground between male and female; and two extraordinary biological women who support transgender people: sex goddess Annie Sprinkle and ex-centerfold model Tornado, who was Stafford’s lover and is the self-proclaimed mother of Texas Tomboy. We take excursions into the life of the spotted hyena, a very special animal society. The female hyena has an enlarged clitoris that looks like a penis. Her bloodstream carries a large amount of testosterone especially when she’s pregnant. Our tour guide for the journey through shifting gender identities is Sandy Stone, also known as the “Goddess of Cyberspace,” who is Director of the ACTLab at the University of Texas at Austin.

Gendernauts

 follows a day in the life of a black French lesbian in San Francisco. Ifé loves women, but vows never to fall in love. As she extols the beauty of women in San Francisco, she slowly cruises the city's streets in her classic car. Her philosophy: "You can never experience too many women." This stylized short is both sex-positive and slick.

Ifé

A Hi-8 video documentary short on Lesbian Gender Bending culture by Swordfish Productions, Berkeley

Best of Festival - Documentary 2004 Premiere San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 2003

Strap ‘Em Down! The World of Drag Kings

TALL IN THE SADDLE: COWGIRLS, RANCH WOMEN & RODEO GALS 

is a Hi-8 video documentary short on cowgirls. 

- Cowgirl Museum & Hall of Fame, Hereford, TX, WPRA 

– Women’s Professional Rodeo Association, Colorado Springs

- CO & International Gay Rodeo Association, Denver, CO. 

- Hi–8 video documentary Human Rights Campaign concert & LGBT march. 

Won Best of Festival - Documentary 2004 EQUALITY ROCKS-MILLENNIUM MARCH. 

Tall in the Saddle: Cowgirls, Ranch Women & Rodeo Gals

 is amazingly hot hardcore indie feminist dyke porn, sure to appeal to anyone who likes seeing gorgeous women and queers do wonderfully nasty things to one another. These aren’t your standard porn star types, but a hip Bay Area cross-section: the sultry femme, the cute boi, the tattooed, and the pierced are all represented.

Categories

San Francisco