An individual’s identity and their understanding of their place in society is heavily influenced by knowledge of their own history and the history of any groups with which they are associated. One of the more important ways we learn about our individual and collective histories is “through the examination of material records of the past.” Archives are an important way of preserving evidence of collective histories...

Hey Look Me Over: The Films of Pat Rocco

When Pat Rocco arrived at the Meat Market in early 1970, so too did the police. Rocco was at the gay nightclub (in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport) to film a nude dance; the cops were there to harass patrons and arrest the owner. So Rocco simply shot the scene as it occurred: a plainclothes officer roaming the bar, checking IDs, the owner being hauled out. It’s easy to miss the profound importance of the resulting short, Meat Market Arrest...

Pat Rocco Oral History – 1983

Pioneering activist and filmmaker Pat Rocco produced short-form gay erotica in the 1960s that was widely embraced by the gay community and received positive reviews from the mainstream press, including Variety, Los Angeles Times and Playboy magazine. Rocco's prolific output of erotic films slowed in the early 1970s as market preferences shifted toward hardcore fare. In the late 1960s through the 1980s, Rocco shot historically important footage...

The Time of Our Lives: In the Life – America’s LGBTQ News Magazine

“Now I know a lot of you are thinking, ‘gosh, not another show about gays and lesbians on television.’” — Kate Clinton, host, In the Life pilot (June, 1992). When comedian Kate Clinton delivered this one-liner in the opening monologue of the pilot episode of the new PBS series, In the Life, there’s no question the studio audience, along with the gay and lesbian viewers tuning in at home, “got the joke.” Up until that point there had been relatively few gay men, lesbians and bisexuals regularly on television.

The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television – Excerpt

“For it is upon the repression of bisexuality that the organization of sexual difference, as enacted within our culture and as represented upon our cinema screens, is constructed.” — Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond. Outside of the erotically transgressive realms of art cinema and pornography, screen as well as “real life” bisexuality is effaced not only by what I’ve named compulsory monosexuality but also by compulsory monogamy.

Lesbian Chic in the '20s

Lillian Faderman is an internationally known scholar of lesbian history and literature, as well as ethnic history and literature. Her work has been translated into numerous languages, including German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Czech, and Slovenian. Among her many honors are six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship...

Further Reading

In the Life and In the Archive: 20 Years of Facts and Feelings