Directed by Mariposa Film Group • 1977 • United States
More than forty years ago, in 1978, WORD IS OUT: STORIES OF SOME OF OUR LIVES startled audiences across the country when it appeared in movie theaters and on television. The first feature-length documentary about queer identity made by gay filmmakers, the film was created by the Mariposa Film Group, a collective comprised of three lesbians (Veronica Selver, Lucy Massie Phenix, Nancy Adair) and three gay men (Rob Epstein, Peter Adair, Andrew Brown). Featuring candid interviews with twenty-six gay men and women across a wide range of demographics, it became an immediate flash point in the emerging gay-rights movement of the 1970s and forever altered the cultural conversation around LGBT issues.
Up Next in The Films of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
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The AIDS Show
Directed by Peter Adair and Rob Epstein • 1986 • United States
One of the most important documents of the AIDS epidemic, THE AIDS (Artists Involved with Death and Survival) SHOW deals with its impact on the community most affected by the disease: gay men. This unique work, one of the first films...
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Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman • 1989 • United States
A tremendous, handmade monument to lives lost to AIDS, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt demonstrated that grief and activism together could forge a powerful symbol of resilience. Winner of the Academy Award for best documen...
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Where Are We? Our Trip Through America
Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman • 1992 • United States
Academy Award–winning documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman take a journey through unfamiliar lands—in their own country. Having spent most of their lives on one coast or the other, they wondered what they coul...
