In solidarity with the victims of the atrocity in Orlando and with the entire LGBTQ community, the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum presents Summer of Solidarity—a film series that includes seven landmark films dealing with LGBTQ themes. This film series is organized by the George Eastman Museum in partnership with the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, ImageOut: The Rochester LGBT Film Festival, and The MOCHA Center/Trillium Health. Admission to all screenings is free. All of the films are from the George Eastman Museum archives. The Summer of Solidarity film series is generously sponsored by Trillium Health.

“Cinema has the power to create a shared, immersive experience,” said Dr. Bruce Barnes, Ron and Donna Fielding Director of the George Eastman Museum. “For the Summer of Solidarity series, we chose seven groundbreaking films that showcase a broad range of LGBTQ protagonists. We hope that these compelling films will bring together members of our community.”

The Summer of Solidarity film series kicks off this Sunday with a screening of the blockbuster Cabaret. All films will be shown in the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum (900 East Avenue) at 7 p.m.

Film Schedule
Sunday, June 19, 7 p.m.
Cabaret
(Bob Fosse, US 1972, 122 min., 35mm)
Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera served as the source material for the Broadway musical that was brilliantly adapted to film by choreographer-director Bob Fosse. Liza Minnelli, in her Academy Award–winning performance, plays Sally Bowles, a singer caught up in the glitz and decadence of interwar Germany. Two of the film’s seven other Oscars went to Fosse and to Joel Grey, who plays the emcee at the immortal Kit Kat Klub.

Sunday, June 26, 7 p.m.
Girls in Uniform
(Mädchen in Uniform, Leontine Sagan, Carl Froelich, Germany 1931, 85 min., 35mm, German w/subtitles)
All of the girls in an oppressive boarding school for daughters of Prussian military officers cherish their female teacher, but one particularly sensitive student falls extra hard for her love ideal. An international sensation upon its release, this was all but lost to film history after it was banned in Nazi Germany for its “unhealthy moral conclusions.” Recent years of queer film archaeology have determined this to be the first truly radical and explicit lesbian film. Girls in Uniform brilliantly details how our emotions and our desires are forever policed, even down to the minutest details of our everyday lives.

Sunday, July 24, 7 p.m.
Victim
(Basil Dearden, UK 1961, 90 min., 35mm)
This groundbreaking thriller stars Dirk Bogarde as a married but homosexual lawyer who risks everything to track down the blackmailer responsible for a former lover’s suicide. The affecting storytelling in this landmark film—in which “I love you” was spoken between men for the first time—actually helped to bring about the decriminalization of homosexuality in the United Kingdom.

Sunday, August 7, 7 p.m.
Death in Venice
(Morte a Venezia, Luchino Visconti, Italy/France 1971, 130 min., 35mm, in English)
Visconti’s screen adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella is a triumph of visual style and a haunting story of contemplation. Dirk Bogarde plays an aging German composer (i.e., Gustav Mahler) convalescing after a breakdown. His ensuing obsession with a blond boy stirs within him feelings long believed lost, the splendor of Venice and the androgynous perfection of the boy penetrating the composer’s reserve and leading to an epiphany of emotion and creativity. Visconti achieved the seemingly impossible by adapting Mann’s intensely interiorized novella into one of the most beautifully visual and visceral sound-era motion pictures.

Sunday, August 14, 7 p.m.
Maurice
(James Ivory, UK 1987, 140 min., 35mm)
Following his successful adaptation of E. M. Forster’s novel A Room with a View, James Ivory adapted this curiously minor Forster work and created something major. Maurice, while studying in Cambridge, finds himself falling in love with his classmate Clive. Succumbing to the pressures of British society, they are forced to keep their relationship a secret—taking a toll on both their lives. Ivory’s beautiful direction, Pierre Lhomme’s unmistakable cinematography, and the talented cast breathe new life into Forster’s novel on the perils of being an outsider in a culture of conformity.

Sunday, August 21, 7 p.m.
The Crying Game
(Neil Jordan, UK/Japan 1992, 112 min., 35mm)
An IRA volunteer (Stephen Rea) becomes involved with the lover of a British soldier. This strikingly original thriller and love story—with a plot twist that deepens the film’s almost dreamlike power—won the Academy Award for best screenplay.

Sunday, August 28, 7 p.m.
Farewell My Concubine
(Ba wang bie ji, Chen Kaige, China/Hong Kong 1993, 157 min., 35mm, Mandarin w/subtitles)
Life imitates art for a handful of characters in the Peking Opera who perform the title tragedy. Hong Kong pop star Leslie Cheung turns in an amazing performance as the concubine, a pained and jealous man unable to distinguish between male or female, reality or dream, and doomed never to achieve his one desire: his king’s love. The makeup, costuming, and production design are immensely detailed in a film that spans fifty years of modern Chinese history.  This astonishingly beautiful epic is one of the greatest films produced in China.

For more information, visit eastman.org/solidarity.

About the Summer of Solidarity Partner Organizations

Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley
Gay Alliance is Rochester’s oldest, strongest champion for LGBTQ life and culture providing the Rochester LGBTQ Resource Center, a new home with services for everyone.

ImageOut: The Rochester LGBT Film Festival
ImageOut is New York State's largest LGBT film festival. The 2016 Festival will run 11 days from Thursday, October 6, through Sunday, October 16. lmageOut informs, entertains, educates, and enriches filmgoers through the exhibition of film by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. For more information visit lmageOut.org.

The MOCHA Center / Trillium Health
The MOCHA Center’s mission is to improve the health and wellness of LGBT Communities of Color. We have a presence in both the Rochester and Buffalo regions. Our organization believes every voice has value, especially in accessing health care services. The MOCHA Center is part of the Trillium Health family. You can visit us online at MOCHAcenter.org.

Trillium Health
Trillium Health is a community health center that offers affordable health care with a strong emphasis on meeting the health care needs of the LGBT, communities of color and marginalized populations. Trillium Health affords patients evening and extended hours, on-site pharmacy and lab services, free parking and sliding fees based on income. For more information, please call 585-545-7200, or visit our website at trilliumhealth.org.

George Eastman Museum

Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States, located on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, a pioneer of popular photography and motion picture film. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 28,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. The museum’s conservation department is supported by an endowment established primarily with funds from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program and, through its two joint master’s degree programs with the University of Rochester, makes critical contributions to the fields of film preservation and of photographic preservation and collection management. For more information, visit eastman.org.

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