THE TEXAS TRIANGLE AND Q CINEMA PRESENT
PROFILES IN PRIDE
Four weeks of documentaries chronicling the gay and
lesbian community's contributions to entertainment.

All screenings are at Celebration Community Church, 908 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Worth

The Celluloid Closet (7:30 p.m. Monday, June 7) The movies are over 100 years old, and gay movie characters have been with us since the very beginning -- even during the Production Code years, when "sex perversion" was explicitly forbidden. From comic sissies to lesbian vampires, from pathetic queens to sadistic predators, Hollywood has both reflected and defined how we think about homosexuality and about what it means to be a man or woman. With clips from over 100 Hollywood movies, and interviews with many of the filmmakers and stars who created them (including Tom Hanks, Shirley Maclaine, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg and Gore Vidal), The Celluloid Closet is an epic story -- by turns surprising, hilarious and disturbing. The Celluloid Closet makes us see Hollywood images in a whole new light, exploding sexual myths and examining our attitudes about sexuality and sex roles as they evolved through the 20th century.

Radical Harmonies (7:30 p.m. Monday, June 14) From Holly Near to Ani DiFranco, from Sweet Honey in the Rock to the Indigo Girls. this breathtaking tour of women's music takes us from the early 1970's - when lesbian folk singers were kicked off stage for being too "out" - right up to the present, when girl-rockers win Grammys. It all began in a fertile confluence of counterculture music and lesbian liberation, when a generation of female performers took to the stage and sang openly about loving other women. Soon enough, Olivia Records, the first all-women's record label, brought women's music into households across the nation, organizing tours and festivals that became the bedrock of a whole new cultural movement. From women's music heroines like Meg Christian and Bernice Johnson Regan, we hear rare insights into the movement's early struggles to become multicultural, fun anecdotes about training all-women tech crews, and the inspiring tale of some scruffy college kids with a ditto machine who dreamed up the now-legendary Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. (Not to mention the story of "Lesbian Concentrate," a clever compilation record of anti-Anita Bryant tunes.) Weaving together photos, concert clips and behind-the-scenes footage with clips from a vast array of songs themselves, this stunning history concludes with bands like Tribe 8, the Murmurs and Sexpod who've reinvented women's music for the 21st century. For those who lived women's music, it's a joyride of memories; for those who didn't, it's a new world to discover.

Out of the Closet, Off the Screen: The Life & Times of William Haines (7:30 p.m. Monday, June 21) In 1930, Billy Haines was America's number one male movie star. He seemed to have what every actor wanted: fame, fortune and a promising film career. But there was one thing Billy wanted even more - a handsome young man named Jimmie Shields. Jimmie was the love of Billy's life, and as Out of the Closet, Off the Screen reveals, Billy wasn't about to keep him hidden in the closet just for the sake of a movie career. When the studio brass ordered him to dump Jimmie, Haines adamantly refused. Soon, Billy was out of the movies for good, but with the support of his Hollywood friends he was able to make a quick comeback with a second career as the top interior decorator to the stars. Billy and Jimmie went on to live openly together for nearly 50 years in a loving relationship.

The Cockettes (7:30 p.m. Monday, June 28) Born from the sexually liberated late '60s San Francisco, the gender-bending, singing and dancing hippie troupe The Cockettes ? composed of both gay men and women ? became a local sensation with their flamboyant stage performances. They reached their height of fame in 1971 when the whacked-out gang was invited to play New York. Using The Cockettes' NYC bow as its kickoff, Weissman and Weber's impeccably archived film then backtracks to the group's 1969 founding by "Hibiscus," the handsome, charismatic member of a commune called KaliFlower. First mounting audacious impromptu performances at movie screenings, they evolved to a full-fledged troupe, concocting super-campy, nudity-laden shows like "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma," "Journey to the Center of Uranus" and "Tropical Heatwave/Hot Voodoo." They even appeared in several underground films, including Elevator Girls, Tricia's Wedding and Luminous Procuress. Word of the Cockettes' kooky and crazed productions spread -- gay celebrities Sylvester and Divine joined and the productions grew more organized and lavish. Unfortunately clashes between the troupe's homegrown purists and aspiring professionals flared high, leading to a bittersweet dissolution with the final performance in 1972. Incorporating a wealth of priceless archival material and interviews with surviving Cockettes, friends and fans (including John Waters), the directors transport us back to this magical, queer and freewheeling past. And, more importantly, insure the vibrant troupe ? whose glittery spectacles inspired Bowie, Bette Midler and The Rocky Horror Picture Show -- are remembered in the future.