Audre is being sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor's daughter. Her grandmother Queenie tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won't lose her roots. Minneapolis. Mabel is trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels-- about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods. When Audre and her father come for dinner, Mabel falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But when test results reveal why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer, it's Audre who is caring for Mabel as they face a deeply uncertain future.
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. When an older fellow slave seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony.
MAJOR! is a documentary film exploring the life and campaigns of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a formerly incarcerated Black transgender elder and activist who has been fighting for the rights of trans women of color for over 40 years. At the heart of MAJOR! is a social justice framework that puts the subjects at the center of their story. MAJOR! was produced in collaboration with Miss Major, the film's participants, and a transPOC Community Advisory Board to ensure that these stories, which are so often marginalized, exoticized, or played for tragic drama, retain the agency and humanity of those who tell them. Miss Major is a veteran of the Stonewall Rebellion and a survivor of Attica State Prison, a former sex worker, an elder, and a community leader and human rights activist. She is simply 'Mama' to many in her community. If history is held within us, embodied in our loves and losses, then Miss Major is a living library, a resource for generations to come to more fully understand the rich heritage of the Queer Rights movement that is so often whitewashed and rendered invisible. Miss Major's personal story and activism for transgender civil rights intersects LGBT struggles for justice and equality from the 1960s to today. At the center of her activism is her fierce advocacy for her girls, trans women of color who have survived police brutality and incarceration in men's jails and prisons. In October 2015, Miss Major retired from her role as executive director of the San Francisco-based Transgender GenderVariant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), advocating for trans women of color in and outside of prison. MAJOR! is more than just a biographical documentary: It's an investigation into critical issues of how the Prison Industrial Complex represents a wide-spread and systematic civil rights violation, as well as a historical portrait of diverse LGBT communities, told with love and humor, and personalized through the lens of a vibrant and charismatic woman. Through first-person narration and innovative visual story telling, MAJOR! seeks to create a living, breathing history of a community's struggle and resilience, as seen and experienced by those who lived it.
In an experimental amalgam of rap music, street poetry, documentary film, and dance, a gay African-American man expresses what it is like to be gay and black in the United States.