Kopkind Colony

CineSlam, Vermont’s lgbtq shorts film festival, begins at 4 pm on Saturday, June 28 at the Latchis Theatre, Main Street in Brattleboro. For tickets, see https://www.cineslam.com. Reception and Pride Cake to follow!

As the US regime ponders whether Iranians deserve to live — along with Palestinians, trans people, prisoners and immigrants from all over the world (but mainly brown and black people) who’ve made a home in this country — the art of film puts humanity center stage. This year, CineSlam’s selection of shorts includes a trio of films from Iran. Beautifully made, often haunting, open-ended, these films are meetings with another human figure, taking us into the life of Iran and its people, their intimacies and conflicts, their courage, their every-dayness and vulnerability.

We did not plan on war when making this year’s selections, but here we are, at a time when seeing common humanity across borders and barriers has taken on the greatest urgency. CineSlam’s lgbtq shorts film festival, this coming Saturday, June 28, at 4 pm, is all about visibility. Whether the subject is a courtroom drama in Tehran or a romance on the road in the American southwest, drag balls in 1920s Harlem or the heartsick-angry-ecstatic poetry of Allen Ginsberg on California’s Lost Coast, lesbian love against the odds or documentary photography as a record of life quiet and out loud, this year’s line-up is provocative, moving, charming, not to be missed.

Also not to be missed: Celebrating James Baldwin 💯: ‘Go the Way Your Blood Beats’, a talk by Richard Goldstein, eminent journalist and Baldwin interviewer. Sunday, June 29, 4 pm, at 118 Elliot, which is co-sponsoring this free public event. Donations welcomed.

Be There ~ June 28 & 29

If you are in the vicinity of Brattleboro, Vermont, join us for two marvelous, must-see events, capping Pride Month, honoring the spirit of liberation and rebellion, and launching Kopkind’s summer season!

Saturday, June 28, 4 pm at the Latchis Theatre on Main Street: CineSlam, Kopkind’s annual Pride Month festival of short lgbtq films.

CineSlam’s line-up this year includes foreign and domestic films, comedy and drama, feature, animation and experimental documentary – including a rare art film made by Allen Ginsberg and Bruce Conner, recovered in Allen Ginsberg’s Lost Work. Shot on California’s ‘Lost Coast’, the 1970 film sets Ginsberg’s poetic recitation to a montage of Conner’s visual artistry: an extraordinary expression of love, lust, heartbreak and dissent; of “memories and flickering images and nasty truths”.

CineSlam’s entire program is always a filmic cornucopia. For tickets, see https://www.cineslam.com/. There will be Pride Cake to follow!

Sunday, June 29, 4 pm, at 118 Elliot: Celebrating James Baldwin 100: ‘Go the Way Your Blood Beats’, a talk by journalist Richard Goldstein, co-sponsored by 118 Elliot.

This second Pride Month event salutes the life and legacy of America’s greatest writer, James Baldwin, with a talk by Richard Goldstein, who in a long and passionate career interviewed Baldwin over the course of a few days in New York in 1984. This event is part of the prolonged centenary commemoration of the revolutionary author and public figure. It is a free public event. (Donations welcomed.)

“Go the Way Your Blood Beats,” Baldwin famously told Goldstein, an admonition to live one’s life authentically. As a black man, a gay man, a person who grew up in Harlem before WWII and left the country for Europe—spending the rest of his life in transit—Baldwin resisted what he called “all of the American categories” and, in his novels, essays and speeches, uniquely challenged America to look at itself, to liberate itself from the violence that still consumes it and defines its power in the world. Baldwin’s homosexuality, evident in his works’ frankness about sex, desire, fear and the many, intertwined obstacles to love and human freedom, is often un- or under-discussed. Our event honors the man, his dazzling originality and rebellious vision in full.

Richard Goldstein was executive editor of The Village Voice, for which he wrote on popular culture and sexual politics for 32 years. Among the umpteen interviews Baldwin gave in his life, Goldstein’s is perhaps the only one that dealt directly with homosexuality, the gay liberation movement and their relationship to Baldwin’s life and work. An award-winning commentator on lgbtq issues, a founder of rock criticism and early champion of graffiti culture, Goldstein is the author of, among other works, The Poetry of Rock; Homocons: Liberal Society and the Gay Right; and Another Little Piece of My Heart: My Life of Rock and Revolution in the `60s. He lives in New York City and Vermont.

We do so hope to see you!