"Homo Harlem" to celebrate gay African-American trailblazers

Bayard Rustin/Billy Strayhorn

The Maysles Institute is celebrating the opening of their new theater in NYC with a retrospective on gay African-American trailblazers:

In honor of the 40th Anniversary of The Stonewall Rebellion and the subsequent Gay rights movement we celebrate the cinematic representation Gay life and culture in Black America’s fabled homeland with Homo Harlem: A Film Retrospective.

The Maysles brothers gave us the iconic documentary Grey Gardens, and "The Maysles Cinema, a new non-profit theater in Harlem, is dedicated to the exhibition of documentary film and video. The cinema extends the Maysles Brothers’ principle that the lives of ordinary people not only deserve, but demand, our attention".

Homo Harlem will run later this month, and features such well-known films as Looking for Langston and Paris is Burning, as well as docs on gay black pioneers Billy Strayhorn and Bayard Rustin:

Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life - Today, historians and scholars agree that Billy Strayhorn remains one of the most under-recognized American composers in history. Born in 1915, Strayhorn chose to live openly as a gay black man. It was perhaps this decision, and his lifelong devotion to Ellington, which contributed to his near anonymity as a major American composer. While Ellington is arguably the most influential and celebrated jazz composer of the 20th century, Strayhorn is unrecognized. Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life poses answers to the question of who was Billy Strayhorn, and why is he still relatively unknown?

Brother Outsider, The Life of Bayard Rustin - This meditation on the parallels between racism and homophobia illuminates the life and work of Bayard Rustin, a visionary activist and strategist who has been called the "unknown hero" of the civil rights movement. Daring to live as an openly gay man during the fiercely homophobic 1940s, 50s and 60s, Brother Outsider reveals the price that Rustin paid for his openness, chronicling both the triumphs and setback of his remarkable 60-year career.

There are other docs about lesbian poet Audre Lorde, author James Baldwin, and artists Morgan and Marvin Smith.

They're all stories that deserve to be told, and voices that demand to be heard. This retrospective will run from June 19-27 at the brand new Maysles Cinema at 343 Lenox Avenue/Malcolm X Boulevard in NYC.