Christine in the Cutting Room

Never before seen home movies made by queer people dating back to the 1930s and the struggle to save them before they are lost forever.

The first major uprising against police brutality, harassment, and societal oppression was not at Stonewall in 1969, but at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier. Those who stood up were trans women and gay men. Now, nearly 40 years on, Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman tell the story of this oft-overlooked event in the history of American civil rights.

A utopian re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921, featuring film history's first cast of over 100 transgender actors, paints a portrait of formerly pro-Soviet sailors at the Kronstadt naval garrison who rebelled against the perceived failures of the new Bolshevik state.

The film tells the astounding life story of San Francisco living legend Vicki Marlane, America's oldest professional transgender drag entertainer. It explores the theme that creative expression is a transformative experience that allows one to overcome virtually insurmountable obstacles -- social, biological, economic and personal.

On an unknown date in August 1966, trans women in San Francisco's Tenderloin district rioted against police violence at Gene Compton's Cafeteria. There was no news coverage, and the arrest records no longer exist. Decades later, historians Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman unearthed the history of the riot and interviewed the surviving “Compton’s queens.”