A feature film that documents the history and impact of lesbian fiction from the 1920s through the 1990s. Narrator Lilli | dG1famtyM1pRVU9nZnM
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00A Radcliffe Hall.
00:04The Well of Loneliness.
00:05The Well of Loneliness.
00:07The Well of Loneliness.
00:08The Well of Loneliness.
00:09The Well of Loneliness was kind of the entree to lesbian literature for so many people.
00:15At 15, my best friend and I fell in love.
00:20While the adults went to the bars, the kids went to the ice cream parlor.
00:23That's also where we found our first lesbian poems.
00:31You could take a book home and under the covers at night, with a flashlight or something,
00:36you could enter a world.
00:39It was not a friendly time, and we all hid behind pseudonyms of one kind or another.
00:46The acquisitions editor said, your character is black, a lesbian, and a vampire.
00:55That's too confusing.
00:58And I'm thinking, who do you think your market is going to be, like two-year-olds?
01:06Heather has two mommies, two roommates, Mama Jane and Mama Kate.
01:11Nice and cute.
01:12Mama Jane has a no-nukes sweatshirt on.
01:16It's never been a separation in my life between my identity, not just as a lesbian, but as
01:23a particularly difficult, provocative, angry, working-class lesbian.
01:34I was a feminist, and still am, and the anti-porn movement had gotten cranked up.
01:40I wanted to write about a different kind of feminism, a feminism that was sex-positive.
01:46I wrote it purely for the passion of telling the story, and just wanting to write in ways
01:52that I hoped felt sort of authentic about lesbian sex, and fun, and just capture the
01:59deliciousness, really, of lesbian love and lesbian sex.
02:07People come up and they get very worshipful, you know, and some of them cry, and they say,
02:11you changed my life.
02:12And I say, I did not change your life.
02:14I opened a door.
02:15You still had to have the courage to go through it.
02:18Take credit.
02:19You did it.