Films: Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement
Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement
USA, 2009, 67 Minute Running Time
World Premiere
Genre/Subjects: Aging / Elders, Biography / History, Discrimination, Documentary, Jewish, Lesbian, Marriage
Programs: '60s/'70s Underground & Queer Cinema, Documentary
Language: English
DIRECTORS: Susan Muska, Greta Olafsdottir
Two women sit watching a slideshow of their life together, and remember the night they met and how they danced together for hours. “We danced so long, I wore a hole in my stocking,” says Edie. So begins Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement, a tender double portrait of two elderly women whose shared life is both ordinary — filled with trips, work and milestones like getting engaged and buying their first home — and extraordinary. Extraordinary because Edie and Thea met in the closeted early sixties, and their lives unfolded against a backdrop of radical cultural change.
Directed by Gréta Olafsdóttir and Susan Muska (The Brandon Teena Story, Frameline22) the film draws on a wealth of photographs from infancy to adulthood to create a mosaic of the two women’s lives, while Edie and Thea reminisce, painting a kaleidoscopic picture of pre-Stonewall gay life: the bars and the parties, as well as estranged families and the constant fear of exposure.
Like any classic romance, there’s a wedding at the end, as Edie and Thea, who is now in a wheelchair due to MS, fly to Canada to bring their Very Long Engagement to its proper conclusion. Also screening is Mixed Use, which follows the life of a building in San Francisco, and its use by Harvey Milk and the founding of a movement at 575 Castro Street. — MONICA NOLAN
Text Voting Code: D330
Copresented by
Bay Area Video Coalition,
GLBT Historical Society,
New Leaf: Services For Our Community,
Women's Cancer Resource Center and
openhouse
Sponsor:
Clear Channel Radio
Official Film Website
Print Source PDF
The following short films will screen before this film...
-
USA
,
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,
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,
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Mixed Use follows the life of a building in San Francisco, and its use by Harvey Milk and the founding of a movement at 575 Castro Street. Text Voting Code: S517...
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