• Run time: 68 minutes
• Country of origin: United States

Rhode Island Int'l Film Festival

August 09 - 14, 2011

Genre:

Synopsis:

It has been said, “Gays have a past but no history.” Gays and Lesbians don’t grow up immersed in gay history, it is something they must search for. For those coming of age in the 1950’s, much of significant American gay history is their personal history -- the Mattachine Society, Stonewall, the gay rights movement, psychiatric redefinition of homosexuality, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Romer v. Evens, AIDS, civil unions, marriage -- it’s all in the last 50 years. Swimming with Lesbians is a film that explores an upstate New York community’s efforts to create an LBGT historic archive – led by the extraordinary Madeline Davis.
As the film opens, viewers are instantly transported into 68-year old Madeline’s life and world as she sets the needle on a well-worn and a bit warped vinyl recording of the first gay anthem, “Stonewall Nation” – a song that she wrote and recorded. Soon we are “swimming” with Madeline though an ocean of memories – some turbulent and gray, some clear as placid water, many seminal to the gay rights movement – and all pure Madeline. Viewers are immediately aware that Madeline has not sat on the sidelines of LGBT history; she is a person that has been making waves for decades. In addition to writing and recording “Stonewall Nation,” produced by the Mattachine Society, she was the first openly elected lesbian delegate to speak at the Democratic National Convention, she taught the first Lesbianism course ever offered at a major American university, and she co-authored a seminal history of blue collar lesbian life, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold.

This archive is more than just the documentary proof that the raw material of history exists. It is for many an important acknowledgement of a struggle to be seen; acknowledged, known. For Madeline, it is a story of passion and power -- for within the individual stories found in the archive, the past takes shape and forms the history of gay civil rights.

Buffalo, New York is a conservative blue collar city, and perhaps for some, an unlikely and surprising home for an archive of this scope. The last half century has not been kind to Buffalo. The social change that made gay rights possible was not always welcomed in Buffalo. Swimming with Lesbians asks the viewer to consider that much credit is due to people like Madeline and others in the film -- people in places like Buffalo, New York -- who moved Gay rights out of the Castro and the Village and onto Main Street. Without them, today might look much different.
 (more)

• Director:

  David B. Marshall

• Writer(s):

  David B. Marshall

• Producer(s):

  David B. Marshall

• Director of Photography:

  Thom Marini

• Cast and Credits:

  producer / director: David B. Marshall
  director of photography: Thom Marini
  music: Scott Perkins
  edit: David B. Marshall
  in order of appearance:
  Madeline Davis
  Camille Hopkins
  James D. Haynes, PhD
  Donald A. Licht
  Danny Winter (Vicky Vogue)
  John Minzer (Tangara)
  David Carson
  Jean Richardson
  Kathy Leacock
  Wendy Smiley
  camera: Peter Lang, David Lippa, Michael Capehart, David Marshall and Robb Yonkin
  audio mix: Jeff Gilhart
  studio assistant engineer: Tim Hull
  location audio: Mike Drago and Peter Lang(more)

• Film Website:

  www.swimmingwithlesbians.com

• Film:

  

• Save Film to Favorites
• Email Online Press Kit
• Print this page