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Vito Russo was at the forefront of every gay rights movement from Stonewall to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, as a passionate advocate for justice in the newly formed ACT UP, and a co-founder of GLADD. In 1981, he published his landmark book The Celluloid Closet that examined the way Hollywood depicted homosexuality. It was the most extensive record to date of LGBT representation on screen, and forced an examination of film's often-homophobic messages. It still remains the definite text on the subjects and is studied worldwide. With heartwarming and humorous interviews of Vito's family and friends (Armistead Maupin, Jeffrey Freidman, Rob Epstein, and Lily Tomlin among them), and clips from an astonishing collection of film treasures, Vito presents a moving portrait of the person who paved the way for and proved the importance of LGBT film festivals like ours. Even after his death in 1990, his story continues to inspire and his mark on the gay community is unquestionable. (Description adapted from the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.)

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According to Audre Lorde’s own description of herself she was: ‘a lesbian, a feminist, black, a poet, mother and activist’. In the 1980s Dagmar Schultz, who at the time was lecturing at the John F. Kennedy Institute at Berlin’s Freie Universität, invited Lorde to Berlin as a visiting professor. This move was to have an enduring influence, for Lorde soon became co-founder and mentor of the AfroGerman movement. In her documentary portrait, Dagmar Schultz distills hitherto unpublished and often very personal material of Lorde that portrays her among her Berlin women friends, fellowtravellers and students, many of whom she encouraged to begin writing.

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