The Lesbian Looks Film Series opens its 31st annual season on Thurs Feb 6th with this long-awaited bio-doc about powerhouse activist Sally Gearhart — a high-energy history lesson on 2nd wave feminism and Gay Liberation in the 70s, and how both unfold in the ensuing decades.
Sally! (Deborah Craig, Ondine Rare, Jörg Fockele, 2024, 94 minutes) the feature documentary begins with Sally Gearhart at the height of her powers in the 1970s. She was one of second-wave feminism’s most beloved icons, penned a cult classic fantasy novel about a female utopia and fought one of history’s greatest battles for queer rights shoulder-to-shoulder with Harvey Milk. But fast forward to 2008 and Sally has been largely forgotten by history—not to mention erased from the Hollywood film Milk.
Yet rather than simply resurrecting her legacy and glorifying one woman’s story, Sally! now takes a more collectivist turn. The film traces Sally’s life trajectory through the eyes of the exceptional women who fought for justice by her side, revealing that Sally not only instigated the political movements that made her famous but was also deeply shaped by them. Finally, when we revisit Sally in 2014, she is living alone on Women’s Land, without the community she helped create. What happened and what will become of her legacy?
Marroney Theatre located between the UA Museum of Art and the School of Music, directly facing the Center for Creative Photography.
