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Pomona
College Professor Wins $150,000 Grant &
Broadcast Agreement For His Documentary
"Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’sCafeteria"
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"Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria," written
and directed by Victor Silverman, an associate professor of
history at Pomona College, and Susan Stryker, a renowned
scholar of transgender history, has been awarded a $150,000
in post-production support from the Independent Television
Service (ITVS) and KQED Television. The ITVS grant was one
of only six awarded nationally for 2004.
The documentary, which is produced by Silverman, Stryker and
Emmy Award-winner Jack Walsh, 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.
“They started the movement for transgender rights, really
for basic human rights, to be who you are, to wear what you
want to wear, and to live the way you want to live,”
explains Silverman. “The riot was the point at which the
movement crystallized. From that point on, transgender and
transsexual people were willing to fight for their rights.
The riot really marked the beginning of a broader movement
to support freedom of gender expression.”
The completed documentary will premier in spring 2005, on
KQED Television (San Francisco), consistently one of the
most-watched public television station in the nation in
prime time. The film has already been shown as a
work-in-progress at festivals in Amsterdam, London, Toronto,
San Francisco, and New York.
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.
“The grant is a great feather in my cap and Susan’s cap, as
historians and filmmakers,” says Silverman. “But what these
people did at Compton’s was so important, that to get that
recognized is the real achievement. One of the things we’ve
learned is that making a documentary is much more
complicated than we imagined, but it is tremendously
rewarding.”
Silverman has been a member of the faculty at Pomona
College, one of the nation’s premier liberal arts
institutions, since 1993. He teaches courses on the U.S.
since the Civil War; U.S. labor and working class history;
the history of the U.S. Right: countersubversion and
counterterrorism; 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.
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). He earned his Ph.D. from
the University of California, Berkeley.
Susan Stryker is the author of numerous works, including:
“The Transgender Studies Reader” (forthcoming), “Queer Pulp”
( 2001) and “Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in
the San Francisco Bay Area” (1996). The former executive
director of the GLBT Historical Society, Stryker received
her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She
recently returned from Australia where she was a visiting
fellow at Macquarie University, Department of Critical and
Cultural Studies.
Jack Walsh is an Emmy Award-winning producer and independent
filmmaker. Among his credits are: “and then one night: The
Making of Dead Man Walking” (2002), “Independent View”
(2001), and “Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay”
(2003). Most recently, he executive produced Girl Trouble, a
film that followed three teenage girls for four years as
they navigated San Francisco's juvenile justice system.
ITVS funds, distributes and promotes new programs primarily
for public television, working with independent producers to
create and present programs that take creative risks,
advance issues and represent points of view not usually seen
on public or commercial television. The $75,000 ITVS portion
of the grant for “Screaming Queens” came from its Local
Independents Collaborating with Stations (LInCS) Fund, which
provides incentive or matching moneys to partnerships
between public television stations and independent
producers. "More information about ITVS and its LInCS
program is available online at www.itvs.org."
CONTACT:
Victor Silverman
Associate Professor of History
Pomona College
Office Phone: (909) 607-3395
Email: Victor.Silverman@pomona.edu
Or screamingqueens@comcast.net
NOTES:
Pomona College, one of the country’s top liberal arts
colleges, offers a comprehensive program in the arts,
humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Founded
in 1887, its hallmarks include small classes, close
relationships between students and faculty, a range of
opportunities for student research, and a stimulating
residential atmosphere.
KQED Public Broadcasting operates KQED Public Television 9,
one of the nation's most-watched public television stations
during prime-time, and KQED's five digital television
channels; KQED Public Radio, the most-listened-to public
radio station in the nation (88.5 FM in San Francisco and
89.3 FM in Sacramento); KQED.org, one of the most visited
station sites in Public Broadcasting; and KQED Education
Network, which brings the impact of KQED to thousands of
teachers, students, parents and media professionals.
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