Esther Newton Made Me Gay
Directed by Jean Carlomusto
A feature documentary about the pathbreaking cultural anthropologist, dog agility enthusiast, and iconic butch lesbian, Esther Newton.
US | 2022 | 92 minutes | Color | DVD |
SYNOPSIS
ESTHER NEWTON MADE ME GAY explores the life and times of cultural anthropologist Esther Newton. The film tells her story of awakening to gay life in the 1950’s, the women’s liberation movement and lesbian-feminism, drag culture, and forging a butch identity that for her is in conversation with trans-masculinity. Keenly attuned to the societal forces that shaped her life, Esther guides us through an anthropology of herself, a study influenced by her love for a sport – competitive dog agility – that pairs her aging butch body with her beloved dog teammate on an obstacle course that is constantly changing.
In her persistent efforts to train her body back into shape after numerous health setbacks, we see the intense drive that helped Esther navigate a lifetime of obstacles she faced in her quest to become who she wanted to be: a butch lesbian, scholar, and athlete.
Throughout her career, Esther was a pioneer – questioning and challenging status quo assumptions on gender, sexuality, and anthropological methods. Her work inspired generations of scholars to pursue research in what would eventually become the field of LGBTQ & Gender Studies.
PRESS
"Jean Carlomusto makes her films with heart, with grace, and with integrity … her portrait of Esther Newton unveils a living, breathing human being, a masculine of center, femme-loving, dog-loving, brilliant and articulate woman..."
"Inspired by Margaret Mead and Gertrude Stein, Newton forged a path for queer studies in academia, writing about drag artists and gender roles. Esther Newton Made Me Gay celebrates the life, loves, and influence of this pioneering figure in queer studies."
"This is an amazing documentary about history, huge achievements, relationships, and competence. It will make you emotional, enthralled, and excited. A true embodiment of strength and endurance. To see the world through Esther’s eyes is a true privilege."
"Through the frank recollections of Newton, now in her early 80s, Carlomusto takes in the dawn of gay liberation, infighting within the feminist movement, AIDS activism, and the history of the formation of the idyllic queer community of Fire Island’s Cherry Grove. Newton's story is of a life well-lived, full of love affairs with interesting women..."
"Esther Newton Made Me Gay is a ‘sigh of relief’ capable of empowering and liberating us, by focusing on the construction and recognition of identities and categories that have been somehow left behind. [...] This film is a political witness that values and enriches dialog between generations."
"Newton planted the seed from which grew the forest of queer and gender studies that are now heard in academia across the world. [...] This documentary deserves applause for the way it will introduce this great woman to new minds."
"Some people, within even queer culture, may not know who Esther Newton is, but everybody should know."
SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS
- Best Documentary, Some Prefer Cake Film Festival
- Best Documentary Feature, Warner Brothers Discovery Audience Award, Provincetown International Film Festival
- Best Documentary Feature Jury Award, Out at the Movies International Film Festival
- Martin Contreras and Keith Orr \\aut\\ Film Award for Best LGBTQ Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival
- BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ Film Festival
- Frameline - San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
- NewFest - The New York LGBT Film Festival
- Provincetown International Film Festival
- Orcas Island Film Festival
- Tallgrass Film Festival
- All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival
- Seoul Women\'s Film Festival
- Fargo-Moorhead LGBT Film Festival
- Queer Lisboa: Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
- Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
- Some Prefer Cake Lesbian Film Festival
- Out at the Movies International Film Festival
- Fabulous Independent Film Festival
- GAZE Film Festival
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Jean Carlomusto
Jean Carlomusto is a filmmaker, activist, and interactive media artist whose work explores the complex nature of unique individuals and marginalized populations. Her work has been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums, and on television. Her Emmy nominated documentary, Larry Kramer In Love & Anger, HBO, 2015, was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. She produced and directed Sex In An Epidemic, Showtime, 2011, a powerful retelling of the birth of the safer sex movements and HIV prevention movements.
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. The numerous works that she collaborated on throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, included: Doctors, Liars and Women: AIDS Activists Say No to Cosmo; Target City Hall; Seize Control of the FDA; Testing the Limits: NYC; and Women and AIDS.
Her personal films are often unorthodox investigative reports on subjects that have been all but erased from history. In To Catch A Glimpse, (Museum of Modern Art, NYC, permanent collections), she delved into her family history by trying to find out if the rumors about her grandmother's death – from an illicit abortion in 1939 – were true. In L Is For The Way You Look, which aired on PBS/WNET, she pieced together lesbian history using whatever scraps of gossip and memory she could find into a humorous portrait of a population’s creative tussle for visibility and inclusion. Her celebrated work, Shatzi Is Dying, is a multilayered treatise exploring queer culture, AIDS politics, life and death, traced through the near-death experiences of a beloved rescue dog.
Her interactive video altar, Offerings, commemorating AIDS activists, has been featured at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles and toured South Africa as part of the Stop AIDS/Make Art project. In 2016, it was part of EVERYDAY at LaMama Galleria, NYC.
She is a Professor in Communications and Film and Director of the Television Center at LIU Post. (4/23)
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A Revolution in Four Seasons
The Tunisian Revolution sparked the Arab Spring. But revolution was the easy part—as two women learned on the journey from protest to functioning government. Emna Ben Jemaa and Jawhara Ettis represent opposite sides of their country’s politics: One is a well-known journalist in the city, fighting for free speech. The other is a strict Islamist from a rural town, elected to help draft the new constitution. Despite their differences, both face the threat of extremists hijacking their fragile political process, and both Emna and Jawhara have to make difficult choices to balance their public political roles with their domestic environment.
The film is a gripping and surprising perspective on the clash between Islam and secularism, and the political role of women in the Arab world. Offering an insightful portrait of the messy work of democracy, A REVOLUTION IN FOUR SEASONS is especially poignant in this global era of divided politics.
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PROFILED
Profiled knits the stories of mothers of Black and Latino youth murdered by the NYPD into a powerful indictment of racial profiling and police brutality, and places them within a historical context of the roots of racism in the U.S. Some of the victims—Eric Garner, Michael Brown—are now familiar the world over. Others, like Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray, are remembered mostly by family and friends in their New York neighborhoods.
Ranging from the routine harassment of minority students in an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood to the killings and protests in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri, PROFILED bears witness to the racist violence that remains an everyday reality for Black and Latino people in this country. Moving interviews with victims’ family members are juxtaposed with sharply etched analyses by evolutionary biologist, Joseph L.Graves, Jr, (The Race Myth) and civil rights lawyer, Chauniqua D. Young, (Center for Constitutional Rights, Stop and Frisk lawsuit). PROFILED gives us a window on one of the burning issues of our time.
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Ovarian Psycos
Riding at night through streets deemed dangerous in Eastside Los Angeles, the Ovarian Psycos use their bicycles to confront the violence in their lives. At the helm of the crew is founder Xela de la X, a single mother and poet M.C. dedicated to recruiting an unapologetic, misfit crew of women of color. The film intimately chronicles Xela as she struggles to strike a balance between her activism and nine year old daughter Yoli; street artist Andi who is estranged from her family and journeys to become a leader within the crew; and bright eyed recruit Evie, who despite poverty, and the concerns of her protective Salvadoran mother, discovers a newfound confidence.
The film Ovarian Psycos rides along with the Ova’s, exploring the impact of the group’s activism, born of feminist ideals, Indigenous understanding and an urban/hood mentality, on neighborhood women and communities as they confront injustice, racism, and violence, and take back their streets one ride at a time.
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Four Wives – One Man
From Nahid Persson, the filmmaker of the award-winning Prostitution Behind the Veil, comes an intimate portrait of a polygamist family in a rural Iranian village. Persson reveals the intricacies of the relationships between the four wives, their husband, their astoundingly free-spoken mother-in-law and their numerous children. Sometimes humorous and often heartbreaking, this film follows the daily lives of the wives whose situation has turned them into both bitter rivals and co-conspirators against their abusive husband.
Persson’s camera unobtrusively and beautifully captures the range of the family’s interactions – from peaceful, pastoral scenes of a family picnic, to the temporary chaos caused by a broken faucet in the kitchen, to a furtive, whispered conversation between two wives about the latest beating. The women’s work – making bread, weaving carpets, milking and herding the sheep – provide the background to their frank conversations. Avoiding sensationalism and sentimentality, this film provides unique insights into the practice of polygamy and its effect on the women involved.
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