Acting
Mondo Rocco is a collection of short films weaved together as it was seen in the Park Theater in Los Angeles in 1969/1970. Charming in their innocence, Rocco's films captured important moments in gay history and are an invaluable resource.
On June 24, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the Up Stairs Lounge was deliberately set on fire — an event that, for over 40 years, was considered the "Largest Gay Mass Murder in U.S. History."
ONE Adventure was filmed in 1972, only three years after the Stonewall riots. The trip was organized by One, Inc., whose members wanted a record of the trip to show audiences at home. The film chronicles a trip across Europe with Pat Rocco, Rev. Troy Perry, and six others.
In San Francisco during the 1970s, Rev. Ray Broshears took to the streets to do the job the police wouldn't, forming the Lavender Panthers, an armed self-defense group. In interviews with Ray's friend Elisa Rleigh, and author Jim Van Buskirk, That Was Ray shows how violence was met with violence to defend the community that many fought and died for.
This entertaining and enlightening documentary sheds a light on a pioneering moment in film history and the gay rights movement, as it revisits the break-through 1960s gay films of Pat Rocco. Rocco was responsible for the very first gay films that were shown openly to the paying public in the late 1960s. Situated before hardcore porn became the norm, and in marked contrast to the somewhat darker gay porn that was coming out of New York at the time. Pat Rocco’s film were more sun-dappled, featuring tanned and happy-looking naked men on sail boats and on beaches, celebrating their identities and the beauty of the male body. The filmmakers got to talk to the generous, rather humble and open-minded Rocco just before his death. It took a team of dedicated Canadian filmmakers to capture a fairly obscure moment of indie film history that deserves to be remembered.
This sequel to "Before Stonewall" documents the history of gay and lesbian life from the riots at Stonewall in 1969 to the present. Narrated by Melissa Etheridge, the film explains the work, struggles, victories, and defeats the gay community has weathered to become a vibrant and integral part of North American society.
A look at the Gay Pride Celebrations in San Francisco and L.A. in the US bicentennial year of 1976.
A documentary on the history of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches and its founder, Reverend Troy D. Perry.
Personal diary-style documentary of German Gay rights activist Von Praunheim's sojourn in the US.
Lonnie Frisbee was a young hippie seeker fully immersed in the 1960s counter culture when he claimed to have experienced an encounter with God while on an acid trip. This event so transformed him that Lonnie became an itinerant Christian evangelist, something of a John the Baptist of Southern California who compelled thousands of fellow spiritual seekers to make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. During the 1970s Lonnie Frisbee became widely known as California's "hippie preacher," the quintessential "Jesus freak" whose pictures frequented such magazines as Time and Life as the media told the story of a burgeoning "Jesus movement." Lonnie Frisbee provided the charismatic spark that launched the Calvary Chapel church into a worldwide ministry and propelled many fledgling leaders into some of the most powerful movers and shakers of the evangelical movement.
