RADICAL HARMONIES (2002) is an 88-minute documentary produced and directed by Academy Award nominee Dee Mosbacher that chronicles the history of queer music by (mostly lesbian) women. Through festival and performance footage, interviews, and archival material from the 1960s to the 1990s, RADICAL HARMONIES delves into a musical culture based on a commitment to feminism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In its heyday during the 1970s and 80s, the Women’s Music Cultural Movement offered a message that was different from the mainstream musical culture. For the first time ever, women made festivals accessible through sign language interpretation, differently abled accommodations, and sliding scale ticket prices. The movement also gave birth to an alternative industry that changed women and music forever. It opened doors for women producers, photographers, sound and light technicians, along with women-owned recording, sound, and distribution companies.
This groundbreaking documentary presents performance footage and interviews with legendary artists such as June Millington, Cris Williamson, Holly Near, and Linda Tillery, who recalled the triumphs of having their songs amplified and recorded by women sound engineers and other professionals in an otherwise male-dominated industry. RADICAL HARMONIES features such early performers of Women’s Music as Fanny, Meg Christian, Margie Adam, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Judith Casselberry, Mary Watkins, and Vicki Randle as well as later artists including Ubaka Hill, Indigo Girls, Toshi Reagon, Ani DiFranco, Nedra Johnson, Bitch and Animal, Tribe 8, and Sexpod.
The screening will take place at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Renberg Theatre on Thursday, October 24, 2024, 7-8:30 p.m.
Filmmakers Dee Mosbacher, Boden Sandstrom, and Lisa Ginsburg will lead a Q&A following the screening. Guest appearance by comic, producer, and activist Robin Tyler.
This program is suitable for all ages.
Participants
Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist and an Academy Award™ nominated documentary filmmaker. Her producer/director credits include STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART, 1994 (Academy Award™ nomination); OUT FOR A CHANGE: ADDRESSING HOMOPHOBIA IN WOMEN’S SPORTS, 1995; ALL GOD’S CHILDREN, 1996; DE COLORES, 2001; TRAINING RULES, 2009. These films have received a total of 46 awards from LGBTQ+, Black, Latina, Latin American, and Aging Media film festivals, including best of show, grand jury, and audience awards, in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Cuba, Mexico, and Italy. Dr. Mosbacher also co-produced NO SECRET ANYMORE: THE TIMES OF DEL MARTIN AND PHYLLIS LYON.
Dr. Boden Sandstrom, PhD, MS, MLS was a leading sound engineer on the Women’s Music circuit and technical producer for major LGTBQ+ and Women’s Rights rallies. In 1975, she founded Woman Sound, a woman-owned sound company with singer Casse Culver. She was a Lecturer and Technical Coordinator in the School of Music at the University of Maryland and published several articles on Women’s Music. Since retiring Dr. Sandstrom has continued her archival work of Women’s Music. She is winner of the American Musicological Society Philip Brett Award for her work on RADICAL HARMONIES, and a Community Pioneers Honoree, Rainbow History Project, Washington, DC.
Lisa Ginsburg is an accomplished film director, writer, and editor whose work pushes the envelope and challenges societal prejudice. “Override,” a narrative music video available on Amazon Prime Video, along with other award-winning dramatic shorts, are audience favorites in queer film festivals globally. Ginsburg is also a published author. Her cover story for Asian Jewish Life, “Worlds Apart in Singapore,” is featured in multiple Singapore news broadcasts and heritage exhibits. Lisa is in development on a dramatic series based on her family’s history in Singapore.
In 1978, legendary comic, producer, and activist Robin Tyler became the first lesbian or gay comic to come out on national television. She produced 25 women’s music and comedy festivals as well as the 3 main stages for National Marches on Washington for LGBTQ+ rights. She was featured in RADICAL HARMONIES and the 2024 documentary OUTSTANDING: A COMEDY REVOLUTION. The latter captures Tyler reflecting on what it meant to be an out lesbian feminist in the 1960s and the price still paid to be closeted: “Closets are vertical coffins,” she declares in the film. “All you do is suffocate to death.
This program is organized by Dee Mosbacher, MD, PhD and is co-presented with the Los Angeles LGBT Center as part of Circa: Queer Histories Festival 2024, presented by One Institute.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center is a safe and welcoming place where the LGBTQ+ community finds help, hope, and support when it is needed the most.