Programmed June 2021

Pride and Protest: The Films of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman

For decades, the queer experience on-screen was defined by invisibility and marginalization. The trailblazing works of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have been instrumental in changing that. Since the 1970s, when he contributed to the Mariposa Collective’s Word Is Out—a landmark documentary that shattered the public silence around LGBTQ lives in America—Epstein has been telling powerful stories that center the gay experience, including the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk . In the late eighties, he teamed up with Friedman to form the production company Telling Pictures, and the pair’s subsequent triumphs include an Academy Award–winning AIDS documentary ( Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt ), a groundbreaking revisionist history of Hollywood ( The Celluloid Closet ), and a narrative retelling of Allen Ginsberg’s 1957 obscenity trial ( Howl ). Urgent, stirring, and deeply humane, these films represent a major turning point in the cultural conversation surrounding LGBTQ issues and acceptance.