Documentary Screening about Lesbian Feminist Activist Sally Gearhart

Our very own faculty-member, Deborah Craig has directing and producing a documentary about Lesbian Feminist Activist Sally Gearhart. The documentary-in-progress will be screened on campus.

Sally Gearhart was a charismatic radical activist and academic who spearheaded the 1970s and 80s lesbian feminist movement. She also co-founded the San Francisco State Women Studies program in the 1970s, wrote cult-classic utopian fantasy novels (complete with flying lesbians!), helped establish a women’s land community in Northern California, and more. But although she worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Harvey Milk to defeat the anti-gay Brigg’s initiative in 1978, most people don’t know her name. The upcoming documentary about Sally hopes to change that.

On 5/2 Deborah Craig will show clips from her documentary-in-progress about Sally’s long and rich life, discussing the adventures involved in film creation and her aims for this project. Although the film begins as a relatively straightforward biography of an overlooked heroine, it becomes a meditation on the symbiotic relationship between leaders like Sally and movements for social change. Finally, at the end of Sally’s life, despite the challenges of aging, her gift for reaching across the aisle sustain her in the end and should inspire our current urgent struggles for social justice and equality