University of California, Los Angeles: Queer cinema retrospective at UCLA begins Jan. 7

The UCLA Film & Television Archive and IndieCollect will present “Pioneers of Queer Cinema,” a retrospective of 33 films celebrating the artistic achievements, impact and storytelling unique to queer cinema.

The 12-date series, which marks a capstone of years of UCLA Film & Television Archive efforts to honor queer cinema, runs Jan. 7 through Feb. 27, 2022, at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum at UCLA.

Presented in collaboration with Outfest, the series draws primarily from the collection of the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, the world’s largest publicly accessible archive of LGBTQ moving image media. It reflects a collective commitment to sharing LGBTQ media in order to bring together diverse communities for wide-ranging, often radical explorations of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“We are honored to present ‘Pioneers of Queer Cinema,’ which celebrates groundbreaking achievements born from visionary artists who have powerfully illustrated identities pushed to the margins,” said May Hong HaDuong, director of the Archive, a division of the UCLA Library. “We are grateful to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation for their inspiring support of ‘Pioneers of Queer Cinema.’”

Sandra Schulberg, president and founder of IndieCollect, said, “‘Pioneers of Queer Cinema’ celebrates the virtues of preservation and pleads for the resources our field needs so we can maintain access to this enormous body of work in all its candor, beauty, complexity and power. We believe that independent films are the hallmark of an open society and that iconoclastic voices are crucial to the survival of our democracy. Working closely with archival institutions, IndieCollect was founded to #SaveIndieFilm and to ensure the films are discoverable and watchable in today’s digital environment and for generations to come.”

Envisioned as a North American tour, the series is available to venues to screen these rarities, new restorations and venerated classics.

Guests for the series include filmmakers Donna Deitch, Arthur Dong, Zackary Drucker, Rob Epstein, Jennie Livingston, Jenni Olson, Jan Oxenberg, Peggy Rajski and Gus Van Sant.