Malcolm Ingram (SMALL TOWN GAY BAR) returns with a new documentary that takes viewers back to sexually‐charged NYC 1968, when the notorious Continental Baths opened its doors. This groundbreaking den of debauchery transcended sexuality and became a beacon to the hip, beautiful and infamous. The Continental brought high and low culture to its cabaret stage weekly, becoming instrumental in the careers of icons like Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, LaBelle and many others. The film tells the tale of a keystone in the sexual revolution that contributed to a level of mainstream gay acceptance and sexual freedoms the likes of which has never been seen since.

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WILDNESS is a portrait of the Silver Platter, a historic bar in the MacArthur Park area that has been a thriving part of the Latin/LGBT immigrant communities since 1963. Chronicling what happens to the bar when art student, Chicago transplant and director Wu Tsang falls in love with the bar and sets up a weekly dance/performance art party, it raises the questions of how popular is too popular? What happens when the safe spaces in our community start to go mainstream? Throughout the film we see the bar struggle with success as the clientele start to move away from its Latino working class, immigrant and transgender base towards a more hipster flavored audience that doesn’t always respect the original community and family aspect of the bar. As media outlets start covering the immensely popular party, the new attention on the bar brings increased police surveillance and some of the regular girls of the bar are deported. Inspired by narrative documentaries such as Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied and Charles Atlas’s Hail the New Puritan director Wu Tsang decided at that moment to utilize his previous organizing experience and film it. The film shows what can happen when such a precious safe space is threatened by gentrification and its own growing popularity. Full of love, energy, pathos and community, Wildness in essence is the love story between a young, idealistic queer person in search of something and the magical bar that takes him in and helps him grow up.

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Join filmmakers, artists, and community activists to discuss trans representation in contemporary media. Saturday, May 4th, 4:00 pm Bright Family Screening Room, Emerson College This panel will look to address the following questions: What is the concept of representation? Who controls the representation? How are stories being told that appropriately display these ideas and concepts? In our years of programming LGBT film we’ve seen the same old same old regarding transgender representation, narrative, etc. and we’d like this panel unpack that. The majority of these narratives aren’t written by members of the trans community and so where is the control? Who tells these stories and for whom? Confirmed panelist are: Dan Hunt. Director of MR ANGEL (2013 Fest), BEAR RUN (2008) Caleb Cole. Artist. Michelle Figueiredo. Michelle is an IS OPS and Business Transformation Senior Associate at State Street Corporation, where she is the only known transgender employee and the only known person to transition on the job in the company worldwide. Other panelists to be announced. This panel is co-presented by the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.

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