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Queer Rhapsody, a celebration of LGBTQ+ Films and Filmmaking organized by the UCLA Film & Television Archive(opens in a new tab), unfolded in a city-wide collaboration that included more than 50 narrative and documentary short and feature films shown between July 19 and 28. The series was presented with cultural partners across five iconic Los Angeles locations: American Cinematheque at their Hollywood and Los Feliz theaters, Vidiots in Eagle Rock, The Broad museum in Downtown L.A., and at the Archive’s home screen, the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum.
The Archive organized the collaboration, in part, to achieve two significant university goals: advance UCLA’s strategic priority to deepen the campus’s engagement with Los Angeles communities and expand UCLA Library’s research collections.
Nearly 30 participating Queer Rhapsody filmmakers are depositing their films to the Archive’s collection of LGBTQ+ films, the largest publicly accessible collection of its kind in the world. For the series, a programming team spent hundreds of hours selecting films, which were viewed by more than 2,000 people across the city.
We caught up with several attendees at the Billy Wilder Theater for the opening night film, Second Nature, which explores the large number of animal species that engage in same-sex sexual behavior and parenting and form matriarchies.
First-time Archive attendee Lane Willis, a school teacher, heard about the series through a friend. “Being queer, this validates my existence,” they said. “I was very intrigued by the topic of the film and of course being out of UCLA just makes it even more valid. UCLA has that type of reputation.”
UCLA Arts alumnus Tara Gruchalski raced from their job in Santa Monica to attend.
Michael Eselun, chaplain for the Simms/Mann UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, has been engaged in public speaking about homophobia through various organizations for three decades. I like the idea that you’re going to multiple venues. This is a UCLA event but engaging the whole community.”
Queer Rhapsody was generously funded by the Andrew J. Kuehn, Jr., Foundation and the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation. Programming series planned for the current academic year include Science Fiction Against the Margins, presented as part of the Getty’s initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, and Giant Robot 30th Anniversary: A Film Series For You, celebrating Giant Robot magazine, co-founded by UCLA alumnus Eric Nakamura.