New York City

Lesbian cinema emerges from the shadows at NYC's Sapph-o-Rama film event

New York’s Film Forum is giving audiences a rare opportunity to view generations worth of formative titles about sapphics on the big screen

CIRCA 1999: Actress Natasha Lyonne on set of the movie "But I'm a Cheerleader " , circa 1999. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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From ground-breaking silent films to windswept romances and sci-fi-inflected feminist masterpieces, cinema has been a powerful vehicle for sapphic storytelling for over a century. And a new series at New York City’s Film Forum, titled Sapph-o-Rama, aims to pay tribute to that rich legacy with 30 titles that represent 10 decades of defining works by lesbian-loving filmmakers, creatives and screen stars. 

For many attendees, the series, which runs Feb. 2 through Feb. 13, will also provide a rare opportunity to watch generations of formative titles with other theatergoers, bringing sapphic cinema out of the shadows and into the multiplex.

“That’s what’s the most exciting: imagining people in these seats, encountering these films for the first time or for the 1,000th time,” Emily Greenberg, one of the programmers of Sapph-o-Rama, told NBC News ahead of the series’ Friday opening. “I remember where I was the first time I saw all of these films — to the hour.”

Andrea Torres, the series co-programmer, echoed her colleague and said Sapph-O-Rama will be “a celebration of self — a celebration of sapphism.”

Read the full story at NBCNews.com.

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