2:00 - 4:30
This celebrated documentary, No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, which debuted in 2021 at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize at Outfest, celebrates the lives and careers of five scrappy and courageous pioneers of queer comics. They paved the way for the flourishing of a remarkable DIY art scene intent on making LGBTQ+ lives visible. The screening will be introduced by the librarians of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the SF Public Library and by the film's Producer, Justin Hall.
NR, 78 mins., 2021. Closed captions (CC) in English.
After the film, there will be a lively discussion about the film and the past, present, and future of queer comics with moderator Margaret Galvan (In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s) and panelists Justin Hall (No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics), Ajuan Mance (Gender Studies, What Do Brothas Do All Day?), Lee Marrs (Pudge: Girl Blimp, Wimmen's Comix), and Gaia Wxyz (The Tale of Daisy and Gaia), all of whom were involved in the film.
Bios
Margaret Galvan is an educator and scholar. She is Assistant Professor of Visual Rhetoric at the University of Florida and the author of In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s. Her writings have appeared in publications such as The LGBTQ+ Comics Reader and Comics Velocity: HIV & AIDS in Comics.
Justin Hall is a cartoonist, educator, and scholar. He is the Chair of the MFA Comics program at California College of the Arts, the first Fulbright Scholar of Comics, and has curated international shows of queer comics art. Hall is the creator of the Lambda Award-winning book No Straight Lines and Producer of the film of the same name.
Ajuan Mance is a cartoonist, educator and scholar. They teach illustration and comics at California College of the Arts and were a Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at Mills College. They have published comics and books such as Gender Studies, 1001 Black Men and What Do Brothas Do All Day?
Lee Marrs is a cartoonist, animator and educator. She was one of the “founding mamas” of Wimmen’s Comix and Gay Comix, as well as the author/artist of hundreds of more mainstream titles reprinted in nine countries, and an Emmy Award-winning animation director. She served as Multimedia Chair at Berkeley College.
Gaia WXYZ (pronounced “wize”) is a multimedia creator who specializes in visual art, specifically comics, illustration, painting and design. Gaia was born and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida and now lives in West Oakland. They received a BA in American Studies from Tufts University (‘15) and an MFA in Comics from California College of the Arts (‘20). For as long as they can remember, art has been the major motivating force in their life, concocting characters and storylines in sketchbooks from an early age.
Connect
Pride in Panels: SF Queer Comics Festival celebrates and showcases the remarkable vitality of the queer comics scene in the SF Bay Area and beyond! The festival includes an exhibitor hall, panels, and workshops as well as a film screening and comics readings. This festival purposefully takes place at SFPL, furthering our mission of supporting reading for our diverse communities.
Co-sponsored by Silver Sprocket, California College of the Arts MFA Comics and BFA Comics programs and the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center of San Francisco Public Library.
LGBTQIA+ Interest
Gather, share knowledge and celebrate our unique identities at the queerest library ever.
For more resources, the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center is the gateway to the Library’s broader collections documenting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual history and culture, with a special emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area.