This film was enhanced tremendously by the archival materials that fill the screen at many points throughout. Below is a bit of information about some of the institutions and individuals whose photos, videos, and films are included.
This is not an exhaustive list of everything that appears in the film. Additional archival resources can be found here.
Institutions and Collectives
The Lesbian Herstory Archives – This is where this project got its start. Founded in 1974 by a group of women involved in the Gay Academic Union, the Lesbian Herstory Archives is home to the world’s largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities. Filled entirely with donated materials, organized and maintained entirely by volunteers, the Archives’ collection captures a wide range of lesbian life past and present, and all are welcome to visit during open hours, to conduct research, to browse, to take a tour, or simply to relax in the space. It is among the most accessible LGBTQ archives I’ve encountered, as you do not need to be a researcher or meet any eligibility requirements to visit the collection.
L.O.V.E. (Lesbians Organized for Video Experience) Tapes Collective – Using some of the earliest video technology available, the L.O.V.E. Tapes Collective filmed lesbian feminist protests and events, particularly in and around New York City, from 1972-1977. The original members of the collective were Betty Brown, Delia Davis, Tracy Fitz, Barbara Jabaily, Doris (Blue) Lunden, and Denise Wong. They were responsible for filming an iconic moment in queer history: when trans activist and organizer Sylvia Rivera took the stage at the rally following the 1973 Gay Pride March to castigate the crowd for excluding trans folks.
Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College – It’s impossible to list everything in this archive, but some of the collections most relevant to those interested in LGBTQ women’s history include the images and papers of JEB (Joan E. Biren), a significant portion of Diana Davies photographs, the DYKE TV archives, the films of Phyllis Birkby, and the Documenting Lesbian Lives Oral History Project.
The LGBT Community Center National History Archive (NYC) – Initially compiled entirely by volunteer archivist Rich Wandel (whose photos appear in this film) starting in 1990, this archive now has a small staff and a growing collection of materials, many of which are New York-centric. While the collection currently leans heavily toward cis male subjects, there are highlights for those interested in LGBTQ women, including records from the Lesbian Switchboard of New York City; the papers of prisoner rights activist Judy Greenspace; and the papers of trans women such as Diana Montford and Felicity Chandell, among others.
Salsa Soul Sisters Archive (housed at the Lesbian Herstory Archives) – Founded in 1974, having grown out of the Black Lesbian Caucus of the Gay Activists Alliance, Salsa Soul Sisters is the oldest black lesbian organization in the United States. It later split into two groups: Las Buenas Amigas and African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change. Their collection is full of ephemera, images, newsletters, and papers that tell a rich story of lesbians of color creating community and space for themselves.
The Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library – The Hemispheric Institute is fantastic organization that works to “connect artists, scholars, and activists from across the Americas.” Their archive, particularly their digital video archive, is a treasure trove of materials that makes work by many queer performance icons (among others) available the everyone. Highlights include work by Split Britches, Carmelita Tropicana, Susana Cook, and Circus Amok.
Dyke TV was created by Ana Maria Simo, playwright and cofounder of Lesbian Avengers; Linda Chapman, theater director and producer; and Mary Patierno, independent film and video maker. This independently produced weekly show was broadcast from 1993-2005, reaching millions of viewers. It began on New York City public access television but soon expanded to numerous cities around the US. The goal of the programs was to empower lesbians and increase lesbian visibility. It was largely volunteer run and covered topics ranging from the arts to HIV/AIDS activism to violence against LGBTQ people, among many others. Collections of DYKE TV materials are held by both the Lesbian Herstory Archives and Smith College.
Individuals (in alphabetical order by first name)
Bettye Lane began working professionally as a photojournalist in the early 1960s. She was present for an documented numerous important events in the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and the LGBTQ rights movement in the US. She worked for Harvard University, CBS Television, and the Saturday Evening Post. Her work appeared in The National Observer, Time, Life, and the Associated Press, and is now part of collections at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the New York Public Library, Harvard University, and Duke University.
Del LaGrace Volcano is an intersex/genderqueer artist and activist. Del has produced five photographic monographs: Love Bites, 1991, a study of lesbian sex culture; The Drag King Book, 1999, a collaboration with Jack Halberstam exploring of drag king culture in the US and Europe; Sublime Mutations, 2000, a retrospective of Volcano’s photographic work from the 1990s; Sex Works, 2005, an examination of the history of sex in the queer scene; and Femmes of Power, 2008, a collaboration with Ulrika Dahl celebrating queer and alternative expressions of femininity in the USA and Europe. Del’s very influential work has been exhibited widely around the world and is part of many museum collections. Del is also ‘MaPa’ to Mike Alexis Volcano.
Diana Davies is a prolific photographer who captured countless political movements and American subcultures ties to those movements, from civil rights struggles to anti-war demonstrations to feminist protest to LGBTQ liberation fights She also is known for her photographs of folk music performers and festivals. She taught herself how to develop and print photographs and in the early 1960s, she began working with the editors of Broadside Magazine. She went on to work for major national and international media including the New York Times. She currently lives in Massachusetts and her work is part of the Smithsonian Institution, Smith College, the New York Public Library, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives collections.
Ellen Shub is an award winning photojournalist and special event photographer. She is well known for her photographs documenting peace and social justice issues. Her photography is published by wire services, newspapers and magazines in the United States and abroad and is widely featured in textbooks. She has worked with the AIDS Action Committee, the Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Boston Medical Center, the Ford Foundation, Harvard University, the New York Times, Showtime, Simon and Schuster, and WGBH Boston. She is a member of the National Press Photographers Association and the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press. Her photographs have appeared in numerous exhibitions in the US and abroad. And her work is included in the collection of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America of the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University.
Gloria Ramirez is a native of Austin, Texas and has lived in San Antonio since 1977. She is a retired bilingual early childhood educator and the long-time editor of La Voz de Esperanza, the newsletter of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center. She was active in the anti-war movement and Chicanx movement as a student at UT-Austin in the late 60s and early 70s where she earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She has been involved with the Esperanza since its opening in 1987. Currently, she is a member of the PreK4SA board of directors, the Esperanza’s Conjunto de Nepantlera.
JEB (Joan E. Biren) grew up and currently lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Despite a privileged education, her photography skills were self-taught. She began photographing in earnest a couple of years after joining the women’s liberation movement in 1969. She went on to co-found the lesbian-separatist collective, the Furies, publishing her images regularly in their influential newspaper, as well as in other publications such as off our backs, The Washington Blade, Gay Community News, and on the covers of numerous albums and books. She published two groundbreaking photography collections: Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians (1979) and Making A Way: Lesbians Out Front (1987). Later she took up moving imagery, documenting lesbian and gay activism from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Her film No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon (2003) went on to win numerous awards. JEB’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution; the Library of Congress; the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis TN; and the Leslie-Lohman Museum, among others.
Jean Carlomusto is a filmmaker, activist, and interactive media artist whose work explores the complex nature of unique individuals and marginalized populations. Jean was an early pioneer in the AIDS Activist video movement. In 1987, she started the Media Unit at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She was a founding member of DIVA TV (a video affinity group of ACT UP) and a member of the Testing The Limits Video Collective. Her films are often unorthodox investigations of LGBT history and HIV/AIDS. Her work has been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. She produced and directed HBO’s Emmy nominated documentary, Larry Kramer in Love & Anger, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. She is a Professor in the Media Arts Department and Director of the Television Center at LIU Post.
Lilli Vincenz, PhD, a LGBTQ rights activist, writer, and filmmaker, was the first lesbian member of the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC, and the first lesbian to picket for gay rights at the White House. She was also a member of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), an early lesbian rights organization. During the 1970s she hosted the Gay Women’s Open House in Washington to provide a safe setting for socializing and organizing. These meetings became the Gay Women’s Alternative. She went on to co-founded the independent newspaper, The Gay Blade, which eventually became The Washington Blade. She has appeared on television and in films, including Gay Pioneers, a documentary about the Annual Reminders co-produced by WHYY/PBS and Equality Forum. Her papers, writings, photographs, 16 mm films and memorabilia covering 50 years of the LGBT civil rights movement are now part of the Library of Congress collection. Lilli resides in Arlington, Virginia, with her spouse, Nancy Ruth Davis.
Morgan Gwenwald is a photographer and filmmaker whose work has covered decades of LGBTQ activism. She has also long been a coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, the subject of many of her photos. In the 1980s she worked with Manuela Soares and Sara Yager to capture interviews with over 40 individuals involved with Daughters of Bilitis for an unreleased documentary film. Between 2001-2003 she directed a number of episodes of In the Life, a newsmagazine focused on LGBT issues and culture, originally broadcast on PBS. She is currently the Head of Special Collections for the Sojourner Truth Library at SUNY New Paltz.
Polly Thistlethwaite is Professor and Chief Librarian at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) where she leads a team of critical thinkers and librarian educators. Polly’s early career involved work with queer archives and AIDS activism that primed her advocacy for public scholarship. She is devoted to changing the system of scholarly communication to allow greater access to academic work by more readers. She maintains a keen interest in queer history and performance.
Saskia Scheffer is a photographer, activist, and long-time coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Her photographs capture decades of every day life, with an affinity for lesbian activism, arts, and performance. She currently works as a metadata specialist at The New York Public Library.
Sherley C. Olopherne is a Haitian, butch, black, woman, educator and photographer. Her identities formulate her perspective on life amongst women, life amongst men, life amongst Haitians, life in the many localities of NYC, and ultimately the life of compromised visibilities. As an artist, she strongly believes her social responsibility lies in the realms of visual representation to engage all communities in a dialogue about what an immigrant, a lesbian, various marginalized people look like. She has led workshops at the Brooklyn Museum, and the Lesbian Herstory Archives, among other spaces.
Special Note About WOW Café Theatre Performances
The WOW Café Theatre chapter of the film wouldn’t be complete without at least a taste of the performances that happen in the space. Below is a list of each of the performances included in that chapter, in order of appearance in the film, all of which took place at WOW:
- Beauty and the Beast (1983, 1986), created and performed by Split Britches (Deb Margolin, Peggy Shaw, and Lois Weaver).
- “June Taylor” Dancers (1986), the opening number from Alice Forrester’s Fear of Laughing in the Lower Eastside (1986), choreographed by Suzanne Tyler. Dancers included but not limited to: Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Lynn Hayes, Lisa Kron, Shara Antoni, Susan Young, Jeep,Quinn, and Debra E. Miller.
- Hamletango, Prince of Butches (2002), written by Susana Cook. Performed by Susana Cook, Anita Maldonado, D’Lo, Lisa Haas, Nora, Storme Webber, Carole Thompson, Fu-chia, Mistah, Moira Cutler, Migdalia Jimenez, Ira Jeffries, and Juana Pepa.
- Musical performance by Mother Tongue (2015), featuring the song “She Dreams” written by by Marissa Dooley and performed by Marissa Dooley, Raphael Agosto, Ana MeiLi Carling, and Wes Ruiz.
- Performances at the June 12, 2015, WOW Café Theatre Rent Party, including performances by Jasmin Van Wales and Jasmina Sinanović.
- Members of the WOW Café Theatre in the New York City Pride Parade, c. 1992.
- Travelling Millies: Millie Without a Name (1989), written by Betsy Crenshaw. Other Millies include: Donna Binder, Linda Gui, Harriet Hirshorn, and Polly Thistlethwaite.
- Dykenstein: Sex, Horror and the Tragedy of the Straight Brain (2003), written by Susana Cook. Performed by Susana Cook, E.J. An, Fanya, Kimberly Gilchrist, Lisa Gluckin, Mika, Mistah, Felice Shays, Melissa Shimkovitz, Chalee Snorton, and Stacey Whitmire.
- Burlesque performance by Micia Mosely as part of HyperGender Burlesque’s “DoubleFeature Live” event (2010).
- The Gratitude Project (2010), co-created by Dawn Robinson and Maria Bauman-Morales. Dancers pictured: Maresa D’Amore-Morrison and Rachel Warren.
- Burlesque performance by Lewd Alfred Douglas as part of HyperGender Burlesque’s “Corrupt Fairy Tales” event (2012).
- Stand-up comedy performance (2013) by Micia Mosely.
- Photographs by Sherley Olopherne from the long-running Rivers of Honey series, a cabaret featuring women, two-spirit, and trans artists of color.