Thanks to the popularity of TV shows and movies like The L Word, Euphoria, Happiest Season, and Sex Education, the lesbian experience has, of late, enjoyed (fairly) robust representation onscreen. Yet that wasn’t always so; for far too long, lesbians (and other members of the LGBTQ+ community) saw their identities and relationships either ignored or played for cheap sitcom laughs. That context makes Film Forum’s new Sapph-O-Rama festival—a 30-film series that describes itself as “exploring the eccentric, enduring, and genre-encompassing history of the lesbian image in cinema”—feel not only timely but deeply necessary.
Sapph-O-Rama, which runs at Film Forum from February 2 to 13, is spotlighting lesbian classics, including Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1996), Chantal Akerman’s Je Tu Il Elle (1974), and Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004), along with many, many more films that even this self-identified queer film stan hadn’t heard of.
Vogue recently spoke to Sapph-O-Rama co-curators Andrea Torres and Emily Greenberg about reviving an aughts-era idea in a distinctly 2024-appropriate way, sorting through the lesbian film canon in order to make their programming selections, and the future of queer cinema in New York City and beyond.
Vogue: What sparked the idea for Sapph-O-Rama?
Andrea Torres: Emily and I have the great pleasure of working together at Film Forum. She manages print traffic for the theater, and I lead publicity efforts for our programming. Because of that, we’ve had the unique privilege of access to the cinema’s archival material and, essentially, 50 years’ worth of historical records—records that include everything from printouts of disgruntled patron emails demanding butter at concessions, stacks of photos from Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I Film Forum premiere party 24 years ago, press binders with reviews of every film to ever open at the theater, original production notes, deadstock merch, and, most enticing, all of Film Forum’s program calendars dating back to Karen Cooper’s first show in 1972. One afternoon, we were rifling through repertory calendars and found one from the year 2000 with a series called Sapph-O-Rama on it.
Emily Greenberg: We were literally dumbfounded and ecstatic to discover it. We met with the inimitable Melissa Anderson—film editor of 4Columns, former senior critic at The Village Voice, and a brilliant writer—who regaled us with tales of the series (as at the time I was five years old and Andrea four) and said it was a great hit. Its legacy was here, tucked away in a basement flat file. So we said, “Hey, this is due for a revival.” We approached Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum’s repertory artistic director and the series’ original programmer (with Michael Sayers), with a presentation and a dance number, and he was very supportive of us taking it on. The original series focused solely on lesbian cult films. Using it as a springboard, we decided to broaden the scope and pay homage to the wealth of films, many made by lesbians themselves, that had been released in the last two decades.
Can you describe the programming process?
Torres: We wanted to celebrate the sapphic film canon but extend past the more obvious or immediate picks and shed light on works from as early as the silent era through to present day, to show both the evolution and enduring spirit of the lesbian image.
Greenberg: There’s really a wide range of lesbian representations in the series. Sapph-O-Rama touches upon nearly every genre. It has cerebral art films, near blockbusters, bizarre Westerns, melodramas, erotic thrillers, and within those is a lot of longing.
Torres: It was important to us to touch on every decade to show how the representation of sexuality, and even gender expression, ebbed and flowed in media over the last hundred years. We start with the landmark 1922 Oscar Wilde adaptation Salomé, starring the so-called founding mother of sapphic Hollywood, Alla Nazimova, and a rumored-to-be-entirely-queer cast. Then to Dorothy Arzner’s pre-Code comedy The Wild Party, with Clara Bow in her first talkie, which skyrocketed lesbian Arzner’s career. Early Hollywood films are more of a game of sapphic hide-and-seek, wading through stereotypes and subtext. We have sadistic butch prison matrons à la Caged, tough-talking Doris Day singing about her “Secret Love” in Calamity Jane, and a butch bravado showdown in Johnny Guitar.
Greenberg: We had a lot of fun looking at the ’70s. There are a ton of outrageous lesbian characters, like in lez-ploitation satire Caged Heat and erotic thriller Daughters of Darkness, with an unforgettably icy countess by day and seductress by night, Delphine Seyrig. These films prey upon and mock the trope of the evil, even monstrous, lesbian character. Then leading into the ’80s, you have directors turning this trope on its head, like John Waters with Desperate Living, Pedro Almodóvar with Dark Habits, and Ulrike Ottinger with the lesbian pirate-ship fantasy epic Madame X: An Absolute Ruler. These films are chaotic, heartwarming, and revelatory depictions of lesbians really running wild and taking up space. We’re obsessed.
Torres: The ’80s and ’90s were pivotal. Lesbian movies were finding their way to conventional theatrical release, though not necessarily to sold-out theaters and not without having to contend with the R ratings they were given. Revolutionary, groundbreaking independents like Lizzie Borden’s Afrofuturist Born in Flames, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts, Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader, Alice Wu’s Saving Face, Maria Maggenti’s The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love—which stars a young Laurel Holloman (The L Word’s Tina)—and so, so many more that we wish could all have been included.
Greenberg: It was devastatingly difficult to whittle this down. We essentially worked through a massive grid of hundreds of titles, leaving only the best of what we believe maintains an inherent sapphic sensibility, in both explicit and subtextual manifestations. We tried to lean on highlighting joy and passion, even if that meant seeking small moments out of less-than-savory representations.
Torres: Looking at Sapph-O-Rama I see something comprehensive, where beloved and groundbreaking classics are rightfully accounted for, as well as titles that can be appreciated in a different way when presented in this context. There are also new discoveries, like some independent works that had very limited releases at the time of their initial premieres that have been unrightfully shelved that we hope people will reconsider.
I’d love to hear which movie each of you is most excited to screen and why.
Greenberg: We have the heavy hitters, but we also have harder-to-sell [ones], like Robert Aldrich’s unsightly yet irresistible The Killing of Sister George from 1968. I won’t say too much, but it features cinema history’s best lesbian bar scene in the unsurprisingly now shuttered famous London Gateways Club, with real dykes in dashing outfits, dancing and drinking with unscripted passion. I could soak up every glorious second of this scene like a sponge and immerse myself in it over and over again, and it still wouldn’t be enough. We are also really excited to include Sheila Mclaughlin’s She Must Be Seeing Things, an underseen and frankly iconic psychothriller that Film Forum premiered in 1987. It was extremely controversial at the time of its release—a bomb threat was called into the theater at its London premiere—which a contemporary viewer will find surprising.
Torres: The Swedish film Fucking Åmål is a perfect ’90s teen movie. It centers on two high school girls on opposite ends of the social spectrum who connect at a birthday party and fall for each other, against all odds! It’s angsty, it’s sweet, and it captures the absolute tedium and pain of adolescence but also the ebullience and resilience of young love. I’m excited for the Film Forum audience to discover Shakedown by Leilah Weinraub; it’s a stylish and radical doc from 2018, shot over eight years, that follows key figures of the scene at a Black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles in the early aughts. And it’s the honor of my life to have the brilliant dancer-choreographer-filmmaker Yvonne Rainer appear for a Q&A following the screening of her film about late-in-life lesbian love and mortality, MURDER and murder. It will be moderated by legendary film critic Amy Taubin, who actually starred in Rainer’s earlier work in 1980.
Greenberg: I can remember where I was—down to the year, month, day, hour, outfit—when I watched every one of these films for the first time. What’s most exciting to us is offering the opportunity for others to see these films in a theater, among strangers or loved ones, for the first or thousandth time.
Torres: I completely agree. So many of these films were foundational in guiding me through my own understanding of my queerness. It will feel so celebratory to be surrounded by a community that shares that sentiment—and also a great privilege to potentially be giving a young person access to these films for the first time.
What does the state of queer cinema in New York City look like to you right now? Do you feel positive about it, or is COVID still throwing a wrench into scheduling?
Greenberg: The state of queer cinema is alive and well in New York City, and there is an eager audience. There is consistently incredible and innovative programming happening all around us. The great thing about cinephiles is that they will wait (and travel) to see something in a theater.
Torres: I’m so inspired by the wave of queer films coming from queer filmmakers who are expanding the canon, telling their own stories in profound and disruptive ways. Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is a revolutionary exploration of trans identity, Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun shook me to my core, and so many more. I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
If you could have one IRL guest at Sapph-O-Rama from any point in history, dead or alive, who would you choose?
Greenberg: Chantal Akerman.
Torres: Audre Lorde on my left. Kristen Stewart on my right. I’m holding the popcorn.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
