With glitter, wit, evening gowns, and enchanting storytelling, Miwa looks back over a 50-year career and a fascinating life in music, film, and television (including the cult classic Black Lizard). As a young singer, Miwa popularized androgyny as a fashion statement, fusing the masculine and the feminine into a signal of a new generation of aesthetics. This evolved into performing as a woman and living off-stage as a man. In recent years he has voiced characters in Hayao Miyazaki’s internationally successful anime films like Howl’s Moving Castle and appears almost daily on Japanese talk shows. Having sold millions of records, publishing over 20 books, and performing to sell out crowds, Miwa continues to fight for gay rights.

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On May 6th, 2009 Maine became the f irst state to legislatively grant same-sex couples the right to marry. Seven months later, a referendum reversed this right, and Maine became thirty-first state to say “no.” Question One, a new documentary by award winning filmmakers Joe Fox and James Nubile, chronicles the fierce and emotional battle. The film chronicles in “War Room” fashion the behind the scenes workings on BOTH sides of the campaign (the first time this has ever been done). With deeply personal and revealing interviews, people bared their hope and heartache as they fought to the finish for an issue framed and anchored in passion and purpose. The film also documents the controversial leading role of California based campaign consultants Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint as referendum proponents. Schubert-Flint Public Affairs headed the 2008 campaign for Proposition 8 in California, and have since taken the lead in a nationwide effort to outlaw same-sex marriage in other states. (Description courtesy of filmmaker.)

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Vito Russo was at the forefront of every gay rights movement from Stonewall to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, as a passionate advocate for justice in the newly formed ACT UP, and a co-founder of GLADD. In 1981, he published his landmark book The Celluloid Closet that examined the way Hollywood depicted homosexuality. It was the most extensive record to date of LGBT representation on screen, and forced an examination of film's often-homophobic messages. It still remains the definite text on the subjects and is studied worldwide. With heartwarming and humorous interviews of Vito's family and friends (Armistead Maupin, Jeffrey Freidman, Rob Epstein, and Lily Tomlin among them), and clips from an astonishing collection of film treasures, Vito presents a moving portrait of the person who paved the way for and proved the importance of LGBT film festivals like ours. Even after his death in 1990, his story continues to inspire and his mark on the gay community is unquestionable. (Description adapted from the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.)

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