Malcom Ingram created Southern Pride as a companion work to his 2006 award winning documentary Small Town Gay Bar. This first piece explored gay bars in rural Mississippi and in this new work he returns to document what it is like running a gay bar in Mississippi following the election of Trump. This new piece also includes a profile of lesbian bar owners in both Biloxi and Hattiesburg. Ingram loves to tell stories of everyday heroes who are creating communities in unlikely places and his choice to make Southern Pride evolved from an opinion piece he drafted for CNN after the PULSE shooting in Orlando. This work led him to think about the work he had done in his original documentary and 24 hours after the election results were announced he had a plan to return to the South and document what was happening there in the wake of this new tide of politics. In his own word, “Southern Pride is the story of strong, queer women and their allies who answered the call to make their community better, in a time when the world is being torn apart.” Continue reading “Southern Pride Movie Review from @kleffnotes”

Josh Howard’s The Lavender Scare is a timely work that delves into the past of American history with an eye toward the LGBTQ community. While many people know about the cultural shift in America where the fear of Russian influence in the United States known as the Red Scare, but other communities were also at risk. Narrated by Glenn Close, with additional voice work by Cynthia Nixon, Zachary Quinto, T.R. Knight, and David Hyde Pierce, The Lavender  Scare uses the past to create a narrative that relates to our present day political and social climate. Continue reading “The Lavender Scare Movie Review from @kleffnotes”