Marga Gómez

Karen Williams burst onto the San Francisco Bay Area comedy circuit in the early 1980s. As the country’s first openly lesbian Black comic to use specifically lesbian material, Karen’s humor was unlike any other. A feminist and LGBTQ+ rights activist, Williams became known for her quick repartee and insightful commentary. But while her popularity as a performer grew, off-stage she was a single mom, struggling to raise her children. In 1988, Karen founded the HaHa Institute, dedicated to helping others find healing through humor. Award-winning director Andrea Meyerson brings Karen Williams' story to the screen, covering her hard-fought battle to break into male-dominated comedy clubs and the joy that has guided her through it all. Rarely-seen vintage performance footage woven together with interviews from family members and industry colleagues—including Kate Clinton, Marga Gomez, and Diane Amos, as well as Karen herself—reveal the life of this amazingly creative and prolific woman.

A chronological look at films by, for, or about gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain". Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, documentaries and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?

After her live-in lover leaves her for another woman, Desi, a young artist, gets incredibly depressed. Her well-meaning friends try to set her up with a number of women, all of whom Desi finds less than inspiring. Meanwhile, teen skateboarder J.T. harbors wild dreams of meeting her idol, comic Marga Gomez. This film, set in San Francisco's Latina lesbian culture, premiered at the 2000 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

An irreverent ambassador of queer culture tours San Francisco's gay mecca.

Four women who are lesbian comedians perform and, offstage, talk about their lives: parents and childhood, coming out, becoming comics, the arc of their careers, and its rewards. Marga Gómez is Cuban-Puerto Rican, from New York City. She mines cultural differences, her hobby horse, and National Coming Out Day. Kate Clinton, lapsed Catholic, gets laughs there and from the comedy of the sex act. Karen Williams, African-American from Berkeley, talks about aging and about the need to tell her story. Suzanne Westenhoefer inherits her grandfather's humor, and she jokes about Martha Stewart and airport security. Each is serious about the power of humor to reveal what's at her core.

A spacecraft is discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, presumed to be at least 300 years old and of alien origin. A crack team of scientists and experts is assembled and taken to the ocean floor to investigate. However, the ship is not as it seems and when a giant perfect sphere is discovered in the cargo bay, things begin to fall apart.

Batman faces off against two foes: the schizophrenic, horribly scarred former District Attorney Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, and the Riddler, a disgruntled ex-Wayne Enterprises inventor seeking revenge against his former employer by unleashing his brain-sucking weapon on Gotham City's residents. As the caped crusader also copes with tortured memories of his parents' murder, he has a new romance, with psychologist Chase Meridian.

A positive mix of stand-up and sketch comedy by some of today's funniest gay and lesbian comedians. Filmed before a live audience at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall on October 11, 1993, National Coming Out Day.

On January 22, 1993 at the historic Castro Theater in San Francisco, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Harvey Fierstein, Marga Gomez, and Lypsinka performed a one-night only benefit for the making of the film The Celluloid Closet, both directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.

A travel writer places a personals ad in the newspaper seeking a travel companion. She interviews several interesting characters.

Now known internationally as the world's first "gay hometown," San Francisco's Castro District was a quiet, working-class neighborhood of European immigrants only a few decades ago. In this documentary, the story of the Castro's transformation is told by those who lived it, young and old, straight and gay. It's a tale of social upheaval, exuberant street culture, political assassination, and the inspiring coming-of-age of an entire community an ongoing saga even today.

The world-famous Cockettes enact Tricia Nixon's wedding to Edward Cox on June 11, 1971. Hurtme O. Hurtme, television correspondent, covers the wedding and interviews celebrities in attendance such as Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Jacqueline Onassis, Queen Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Taylor. Coretta King sings. During the reception, Eartha Kitt puts LSD in the punch. All hell breaks loose.

Palace, the only known film made during an actual Cockettes performance, documents the backstage and onstage goings-on at the group’s only Halloween show, Les Ghouls.