Mariposa's Individual Politics
"Were you always...gay?" an interviewer behind the camera asks a Hispanic woman as the film opens. The camera's subject, Nadine Armijo of Pasadena, is simultaneously posed on her bed and avoiding the gaze of the camera pointed at her. She hesitates, then affirm this. Nadine's reserve is not unique among the 26 voices interviewed in Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977), re-released at Anthology Film Archives this week. The film, directed and produced by Mariposa Film Group, recorded openly gay men and women from around the country as they relayed their pasts and sought to define their role in a society that had long excluded them. Word is Out would set a precedent in gay and lesbian filmography for candidly documenting the gay experience in the Twentieth Century. Read More
