by Annette Basile
Worth: $13.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Mardi Gras Film Festival
Cast:
Sally M. Gearhart
Intro:
… entertaining and vibrant …
This is an entertaining and vibrant doco about lesbian feminist firebrand and author Sally Gearhart. But it’s also hyperactive, breathlessly covering Gearhart’s life without going into any real depth about the times that she was very much a product of.
The late Gearhart – who is interviewed here shortly before her death in 2021 – emerges as a larger-than-life character who fought for gay, lesbian and women’s rights, primarily during the 1970s. An academic, she was charismatic, committed and exceptionally articulate but she had a big ego, and she basked in the attention. At one point, three of her friends and fellow activists face the camera, and one – Cynthia Secor – drops the word ‘narcissist’ to describe Gearhart. The other two women simply nod in agreement. Later, Secor attempts to retract the word but it’s too late.
As an academic at San Francisco State University, Gearhart built the template for teaching women’s studies and made a real difference. She also worked with Harvey Milk. The pair successfully fought against the infamous Proposition 6, which sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers from Californian classrooms.
Sally! suggests that Gearhart was written out of Gus Van Sant’s Milk – the excellent biopic starring Sean Penn. But was it really the patriarchal nature of society that wiped Gearhart from the 2008 film, as is suggested here? When Dustin Lance Black was questioned about Gearhart’s absence from the biopic, the screenwriter said that he didn’t know how to work her in – she’d only known Milk for a few months before Milk’s assassination.
Screenwriting economy or the patriarchy? Sally! doesn’t delve into this or other questions deeply enough, it’s more concerned with trying to fit Gearhart’s big life into 90-odd minutes.
As it moves out of the protest era, Sally! shows Gearhart’s attempt at setting up an all-women commune in the forests north of San Francisco. Gearhart advocated separatism – at least at some points – and it’s a theme of her speculative novel The Wanderground, something that does get a decent amount of airtime here, with parts of the novel decently animated with an aging Gearhart providing the voiceover.
Director Deborah Craig initially set out to make a film about lesbians and aging but changed tack when she learned more about Gearhart. The film underlines the trailblazer’s achievements and while it is enjoyable, and there is enough here of interest to appeal to a broad audience, it doesn’t quite satisfy.
