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Pomona
Professor Wins Grant for his Documentary "Screaming
Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria"
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Victor Silverman, an associate professor of history at
Pomona College, was awarded a 2003 Horizons/Frameline Film
and Video Completion Fund grant to complete post-production
work on his documentary, "Screaming Queens: The Riot at
Compton's Cafeteria." The documentary recounts the riot at
an all-night coffee shop in 1966 that sparked a militant
transgender movement in San Francisco. The $6,000 grant for
“Screaming Queens” was the top prize of the four grants
awarded to the competition’s winners.
The documentary, which is co-directed by Susan Stryker,
tells the story of the first known act of militant
transsexual resistance to social oppression. In 1966, three
years before the more famous uprising at New York’s
Stonewall Inn, transgender street prostitutes in San
Francisco’s impoverished Tenderloin district fought back
against a police raid at Compton’s Cafeteria, a popular
all-night neighborhood hang-out. The riot marked the
beginning of a broader movement to support freedom of gender
expression.
The first act of Screaming Queens introduces a diverse cast
of former street queens, drag entertainers, police officers,
ministers, and neighborhood activists. They recount the
story of the difficult conditions, as well as the sense of
solidarity among the neighborhood’s transgender residents.
The second act shows the connection between transgender
militancy and the larger social upheavals affecting the
Tenderloin in the 1960s: the civil rights and sexual
liberation movements, the youth counterculture, urban
renewal, and Great Society anti-poverty programs.
The third act explores the reverberations, both large and
small, of the rise of transgender activism, a story in which
the riot at Compton’s cafeteria plays a pivotal role. It
shows how, at the local level, transgender people were able
to link their specific grievances with a greater social
justice agenda. Many of those accomplishments were lost to
history until the making this film.
“Screaming Queens“ ends on a high note, by suggesting how
transgender activism in the 1960s helped transform American
culture in subtle and profound ways--changes as obvious as
clothing and hair styles, as pervasive as gender-bending pop
stars; invisible as new bureaucratic procedures for changing
name and gender on government documents; and as inspiring as
a new wave of transgender activism.
Silverman and Stryker, who are still raising funds to
complete post-production, plan to complete the hour-long
documentary this summer and enter the film in festival
circuit in fall 2004. “Screaming Queens” is intended for
festival, theatrical, and public television distribution.
The film has already been shown as a work-in-progress at
festivals in Amsterdam, London, Toronto, San Francisco, and
New York.
Silverman, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of
California, Berkeley, teaches courses on the U.S. since the
Civil War; U.S. labor and working class history; the history
of the U.S. Right; the U.S., Palestine, and Israel; the U.S.
and the world from 1890 to the present; and the
international history of the Cold War. He has been a member
of the Pomona College faculty since 1993.
Among Silverman’s areas of expertise are San Francisco Bay
Area and California history, the history of sexual and
gender minorities, international labor movements, and the
Cold War. His most recent publications include “Imagining
Internationalism in American and British Labor, 1939-1949”
(2000); “The Failure of Jewish Americanization” in Jewish
Locations (2001); and, as historian, “Los Angeles Times
Front Pages Collections” (2003).
The Horizons/Frameline Completion Fund was established over
ten years ago to assist lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender media artists with the final stages of
production. To date, more than 50 films and videos have been
completed with assistance from the fund, including Rodney
Evans' “Brother to Brother” (in competition at Sundance
2004), Harry Dodge & Silas Howard's “By Hook Or By Crook,”
Cheryl Dunye's “Watermelon Woman,” Barbara Hammer's “Nitrate
Kisses,” Rose Troche's “Go Fish,” David Weissman and Bill
Weber's “The Cockettes,” Yvonne Welbon's “Living With Pride:
Ruth C. Ellis @ 100” and “The Brandon Teena Story” by Susan
Muska and Greta Olafsdottir.
CONTACT:
Victor Silverman
Associate Professor of History
Pomona College
Office Phone: (909) 607-3395
Email:
Victor.Silverman@pomona.edu
Or
screamingqueens@comcast.net
Read Victor Silverman's
Faculty Profile...
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