The Winona State University Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Tansgender-Ally Faculty Committee will be conducting a GLBTA Film Series from October 4 – 30. All screenings are free and open to the public. There will be a short discussion to follow each film.
Screening Schedule:
Milk
October 4, Somsen Auditorium, 7pm
Milk is a 2008 American biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, the film stars Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as Dan White, a city supervisor who assassinated Milk. The film received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, winning two for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Penn and Best Original Screenplay for Black.
Genderf*kation: A Gender Emancipation
October 11, Somsen Auditorium, 7 pm
Genderf*kation: A Gender Emancipation is the story of six individuals and their journey & triumphs through the social, religious and political landscapes of a society that struggles to understand or allow for gender variations. This documentary includes provocative interviews with professionals and outreachmembers who are active in this community to help shed light on a very controversial matter. This film breaks through the gender stereotypes and historical gender ideologies to liberate our bodies, minds and spirits from our own social Gender Dysphoria. Although it is based in Minnesota, the subject matter has no borders. The subject of gender is a taboo topic in many societies, yet fundamental to every aspect of all of our lives.
Beautiful Thing
October 17, Stark 103, 7pm
The iconoclastic, underachieving denizens of a southeast London apartment building get an emotional wake-up call when two teenage boys — next-door neighbors Jamie and Ste — unexpectedly fall in love. This moving slice of affecting kitchen-sink realism from Britain’s esteemed Channel Four Films is adapted from the hit West End play penned by Jonathan Harvey, who also directs.
A Family is a Family is a Family
October 18, Somsen Auditorium, 7pm
In A Family Is a Family Is a Family, kids offer touching, profound and often funny insights about what being a family means to them. Among those featured are: childrenwith two fathers or two mothers; a girl whose mother and father adopted her in China; three brothers who live with their mother and grandmother; a pair ofmothers who are getting married to make one big family; and families with adopted kids and children born through in-vitro fertilization.
Mosquita y Mari
October 24, Stark 103, 7pm
Mosquita y Mari is a coming of age story that focuses on a tender friendship between two young Chicanas. As their friendship grows, a yearning to explore their strange yet beautiful connection surfaces. Lost in their private world of unspoken affection, lingering gazes, and heart-felt confessions of uncertain futures, Yolanda’s grades begin to slip while Mari’s focus drifts away from her duties at a new job. Mounting pressures at home collide with their new-found connection, forcing them to choose between their obligations to others and staying true to themselves.
Transamerica
October 30, Somsen Auditorium, 7pm
Transamerica follows Bree–formerly Stanley–a pre-operative male-to-female transexual awaiting gender-reassignment surgery who learns she has a wayward teenage son named Toby. When her therapist strongarms Bree into facing her past, she bails Toby out of jail and they end up on a road trip across the country. Bree wrestles with discomfort and compassion as she learns about Toby’s own troubles, even while her own grow worse when she’s forced to ask for help from her hostile parents.
*A brief reception will be held before the final screening in the lobby outside Somsen Auditorium.
The film series is sponsored by: GLBTA Faculty Committee, English Department, Theater and Dance, Women’s and Gender Studies, Communication Studies, Social Work, History Department, Counseling Services & GLBTA Partnership.