Newbrough, Cheryl

1997

Goodbye Emma Jo begins with a woman picked up at her lover’s gravesite and gets raunchier from there. Be warned (or be happy) – this film contains explicit scenes.

Gademans, Carlie

1997

A wild tumultuous clash between vivid gayness and bland funtamentalism.

Cobb, Judith

1997

A woman calls a lesbian phone sex service for a little release; things go horribly wrong.

Miller, Courtney

1997

Sorority rush is infiltrated by butch lesbians with horrific results.

von Praunheim, Rosa

1997

Rosa von Praunheim's documentary begins with 19th-century gay personalities and ends in our very own City by the Bay. Along the way, von Praunheim takes on the immense task of chronicling a mostly Western-European gay history. Using historical reenactments as well as interviews with German historians and citizens, the film details some of the atrocities inflicted on gays through the ages for practicing "the love that dare not speak its name.” We've come a long way from the days of Nazi concentration camps and blackmailing, and for von Praunheim there's no clearer symbol of that change than present-day San Francisco. He portrays the City Over The Rainbow as the nexus of a broader queer sensibility, a place where our identities have moved well beyond closed doors and into city hall. Von Praunheim captures bear love at the annual Folsom Street Fair, lesbian parents speaking out at a local PTA meeting, and drag queens campaigning for presidential office. In Rosa’s eyes, the future could not be brighter.

Hofstein, Bret

1997

Wine, Shelley

1997

A feature documentary about women, nature and political activism.

It was the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history: nearly 900 women were arrested for blockading the logging road at Clayoquot Sound, where a rainforest was being clear-cut by private corporations. The protesters ranged from gray-haired grandmothers to barefoot little girls, many taking a public political stand for the first time in their lives. Through footage of the protests and interviews with the arrested women, this enormously moving documentary explores the politicization of "hundreds of law abiding citizens who quite simply could no longer stand idly by and watch the continued decimation of our natural world." From the devastating opening shots of thousands of acres of clear-cut land to the ten-year-old girl explaining to the police why she is willing to be arrested, Fury For The Sound delineates with passionate clarity the connection between political activism and personal empowerment.

Cottam, Kevin

1997

A man’s dead lover comes back to help him reconcile the past in From The Ashes.

Wexler, Tanya

1997

She's looking for her Prince Charming... he just lost his.

A chance encounter produces the greatest rewards in Tanya Wexler’s bittersweet Finding North. Rhonda, a big-haired bank teller from Brooklyn, first spots Travis as he’s about to jump from a bridge. In Travis she sees a golden opportunity to rescue a lost soul and fall in love in the process. But there’s one major obstacle: he’s a distraught gay male grieving the loss of his lover, Bobby. Through her selfish persistence, Rhonda wriggles her way into his life, and the unlikely pair head to a small Texas town to fulfill Bobby’s last wish. Along the way, they realize they may be of use to each other: Travis would rather die than live life alone, and Rhonda, escaping an overbearing mother and a rootless existence, needs someone. They ultimately prove to be each other’s personal salvation as they learn the futility of running away from their problems. A ’90s romantic comedy of sorts, Finding North is an allegory for that elusive destination we’re all looking for – we don’t know how to find it, but we know when we get there.

Trubuhovich, May

1997

With the help of her mischievious alter ego, a woman searches for the animal within.