Grit & Grind

An ode to the Florida Everglades, past and present, told through the prescient writings of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and those who today call the region home.

It's a hot summer day in June, 1969. Marsha throws herself a birthday party and dreams of performing at a club in town, but no one shows up. Sylvia, Marsha’s best friend, distraught from an unsuccessful introduction between her lover and her family, gets so stoned she forgets about the party. Marsha, Sylvia, and friends eventually meet at the Stonewall Inn to celebrate Marsha's birth. When the police arrive to raid the bar, Marsha and Sylvia are among the first to fight back.

Fucking Different XXY intends finally to dissolve the binarity of classic gender identities. Seven transgender filmmakers from all over the world have made short films about aspects of sexuality that are alien to them.

Facing eviction the oldest black-owned gay bar in Brooklyn relies on a passionate community in its fight for survival.

Paint it Again explores the home shared by a woman and her late partner for over 40 years. Now the home of only one surviving partner, the space has become museum-like. Meticulously arranged and decorated, the house is full of objects like artifacts that hold memories and hint at a life shared in this space, a life that is now gone.

Stonewall veterans (including prominent trans activist Sylvia Rivera) and HIV-positive New Yorkers take up residency on the Hudson River piers as cranes raze vacant buildings for a new skyline.

Set among the dunes and clubs of Fire Island, which have witnessed decades of cruising and dancing, the film blends a performance of Morgan Bassichis's song "We Have Always Been on Fire" with 1976 footage by queer nightlife documentarian Nelson Sullivan. We Have Always Been on Fire traces a queer lineage and engages with loss.

A portrait of a queer squat in a rapidly changing area of West Philadelphia.

Shoog McDaniel is a fat, queer, and disabled photographer working in and around northern Florida’s vast network of freshwater springs. For over a decade, Shoog’s photographs have transformed the way fat people view themselves and how a fat-phobic society views their bodies. Bringing Shoog’s photography to life, director Sasha Wortzel immerses audiences in a world of fat beauty and liberation, one in which marginalized bodies—including bodies of water—are sacred.

I Guess Im Not Going to Get to Vegas is a short portrait of Florence Sterling, who passed away from lung cancer, told through the stories and memories of her lover of over 40 years, Aileen. The piece explores illness, love, and loss through the relationship between two elderly Jewish lesbians who came out before the emergence of a visible gay rights movement.