The Film's Advisors

ADVISORS

Paula C. Austin, is an activist and writer. She has written numerous essays about femme identity, one of which were included in the anthologies, The Persistent Desire: A Femme/Butch Reader, and Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism.

Tina D’Elia, is an actress, performance artist, writer, community activist, and the former Director of the Hate Violence Survivors Advocacy Project at Community United Against Violence (CUAV) in San Francisco, which provides a wide range of services to victims of hate crimes.

Jewelle Gomez, is a poet, writer and activist and the author of the double Lambda Award-winning novel, The Gilda Stories, from Firebrand Books. Her articles and essays about femme identity and butch/femme dynamics have been included in numerous anthologies. She is the author of Forty Three Septembers, 1993 and a new collection of short fiction, Don't Explain, 1997. Her publications include three collections of poetry; The Lipstick Papers, 1980, Flamingoes & Bears,1986, both self published. The most recent is Oral Tradition, 1995. She co-edited a fantasy fiction anthology entitled Swords of The Rainbow, 1996. She is currently on the national advisory boards of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, POETS & WRITERS, Inc., and the Human Sexuality Archives of Cornell University. An early member of the board of the Astraea Foundation she is currently on the funding board of the Open Meadows Foundation.

Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity, The Drag King Book, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters and a new book from NYU. She is Professor of English and Director of the Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. She teaches courses in queer studies, gender theory, art, literature and film.

Joan Nestle, is a writer, teacher, poet, historian, and lesbian activist. She is the co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in NYC. She is the subject of the documentary feature film, Hand On The Pulse, 2002, and editor of The Persistent Desire: A Femme/Butch Reader, 1992, which is a collection of essays considered one of the most important works in the study of butch/femme gender identities and dynamics. She has two collections of writings, A Restricted Country, 1987 and A Fragile Union: New and Collected Writings, 1998 and is co-editor of Women on Women 3 : A New Anthology of American Lesbian Fiction. She has been a contributor to dozens of anthologies about femme identity, butch/femme dynamics, lesbian history, queer history, and lesbian erotica. She is on the Advisory Board of the Feminists For Free Expression.

Kara Keeling, Asst. Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Author of Dig If You Will the Picture: The Cinematic, the Black Femme & the Image of Common Sense. Her essays on media and popular culture have appeared The Black Scholar, Qui Parle and other publications.

Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, is the head of Women's Studies at the University of Arizona. Her research pioneered the study of lesbian history, a subject on which she has published widely, including the prize-winning book, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: the History of a Lesbian Community. She is currently working on One Woman, Two Lives: Gender, Class and Sexuality in 20th Century America, which is about the life story of Julia Boyer Reinstein an upper-middle class woman, born in rural western New York in 1906, who lived her early life and her later life as a lesbian, but was married and had children in her middle years.

Jenni Olson, is a curator, author, and filmmaker. She has been programming, researching, collecting, creating, and writing about lesbian and gay film since 1986 and is one of the world's leading experts on lesbian and gay cinema. She is a co-founder of PlanetOut.com's PopcornQ, the largest gay and lesbian movie website as well as the largest gay entertainment site on the Internet. The PopcornQ site is based on her book, The Ultimate Guide to Lesbian & Gay Film and Video, 1996. She directed an experimental narrative feature about being queer in San Francisco called The Joy of Life.

Esther Rothblum, is Professor of Women's Studies at San Diego State University. She is the editor of the Journal of Lesbian Studies, and has edited over twenty books on gender, sexual orientation, and international issues. Her teaching, research and writing focuses on women's mental health and relationships, and is currently conducting on butch and lesbian identities. d also on the stigma of women's weight.