Episode 13: Outfest Legacy Project Managers of Past & Present- Brendan Lucas, Taylor Morales & Alice Royer

Pride Month has been AMAZING.

To say that my guests have blown my mind would be an understatement.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to check out the episodes with Anne Kelly, Magnus Berg,  or T.J. Tallie, I highly recommend that you do so. I am terribly proud of the fact that I was able to document these incredible people who are making such a difference in our landscape and are such immense figures as far as the idea of Pride is concerned. I am personally proud to know them and call them friends and colleagues but I am inspired by their continued power and brilliance in a world and professional landscape that does not always welcome queerness.

Which leads me to this week and the Outfest Legacy Project. As a 2-time UCLA grad school alumna, one of the things that I love about that school is the preservation work they do on LGBTQ+ materials with Outfest. While I was in archiving school there, I really wanted to intern with them but that never happened. So next best thing: I go to the festival every year, I have volunteered with them and for the grand finale of Pride Month on Archivist’s Alley, I am welcoming three amazing colleagues on to speak about the Legacy Project, Outfest, their work and the film festival coming up in July.

I know I say this about every episode, but really- it’s a GREAT EPISODE. Check it out! Brendan, Taylor & Alice RULE!!!! Bios and pix below the episode link, as usual.

Bios:

Taylor Morales is the Production Art Librarian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Margaret Herrick Library where she manages and catalogs the Academy’s unique collection of production design drawings, costume design drawings, storyboards, and other artwork related to the motion picture industry. Taylor previously managed the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation where she contributed to the restoration of her favorite film Desert Hearts (1985) in addition to preserving and screening many other archival queer films. She is now a proud member of the Legacy Project Advisory Council.

Here is a link to buy the Desert Hearts DVD and Bluray via Criterion:

https://www.criterion.com/films/29139-desert-hearts

Brendan Lucas attended UC Santa Barbara and the Moving Image Archive Studies Program at UCLA. He is currently the Legacy Project Manager for the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, a joint effort between Outfest and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, where he supports the collection, documentation, preservation and exhibition of LGBTQ moving images. For the past 5 years, Brendan has worked at Deluxe Audio Services (formerly Chace Audio) where he has coordinated and written about audio restoration projects for film and television.
Born and raised in Northern California, he currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is always either interested in–or going to–events in and around his adoptive hometown.
Outfest LGBT Film Festival (July 12-22, 2018)
Outfest UCLA Legacy Project
Legacy Screening Series at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood (year-round)
Alice Royer is a film and media scholar, archivist, and programmer living in Los Angeles. She has very nearly completed her PhD in Cinema & Media Studies at UCLA, where she also earned an MA in Moving Image Archive Studies. Previously, Alice oversaw the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project as Legacy Project Manager from 2014-2016, during which time she was selected to serve on the Teddy Award Jury at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival. She has been a longtime Assistant Programmer for Outfest, and has screened films for AFI FEST, and the Los Angeles Film Festival. And also she has a dog named Walter, whom she probably anthropomorphizes too much.
The following is a short featurette on the preservation of the 1919 silent film that she mentions having worked on during her tenure as Project Manager, Different From The Others (1919).

Episode 12: T.J. Tallie- Claiming Space, Archives on Their Own Terms & Weaponized Fashion

I got very lucky when I met T.J. and I have never taken our relationship for granted.

I learned some incredible lessons from T.J. about respect, listening and boundaries. I hope that everyone in their life can have a T.J. Seriously.

An excellent teacher, a brilliant human being, and an impeccable dresser. So that’s my spiel. But his bio and and the links below really say more than I ever could because I will just gush about his lovely laugh, warmth & sparkle. And the fact that I never knew what a clafoutis was until he posted pix of the ones he made. THEY LOOKED DELICIOUS, BTW.
I hope you enjoy this episode and this GLORIOUS WONDERFUL human!!!

T.J. Tallie is currently Assistant Professor of African History at Washington and Lee University.  This fall he will begin as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of San Diego.  He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He is the author of the forthcoming book, Unsettling Natal: Race, Gender, and Colonial Logics in Southern Africa, 1850-1910, which examines the creation of the nineteenth-century settler colony of Natal and ideas of race, gender, and sexuality in the British Empire. His recent publications include “Sartorial Settlement: the Mission Field and Transformation in Colonial Natal, 1850-1897,” in Journal of World History, 27, no. 3 (2016): 389-410; “Queering Natal: Settler Logics and the Disruptive Challenge of Zulu Polygamy,” InGLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 19, no. 2 (2013): 167-189.  He is an Aries, an ENFJ, and an unapologetic Gryffindor with Ravenclaw tendencies.

Enjoy his ridiculous fashion blog, Clockwork Black (http://clockworkblackblog.wordpress.com)

Archives y’all should visit and show love to:

Killie Campbell Africana Library

Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository

National Archives, Kew

National Archives of New Zealand

Things to read, based on this podcast:

Cathy Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ, May 1997 3(4): 437-465

Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands

Tsitsi Dengaremba, Nervous Conditions

Mariama Bâ, So Long A Letter

Kopano Matlwa, Coconut: A Novel

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others

Michael Twitty, The Cooking Gene

Aimé Césaire. Discourse on Colonialism.

Maria Lugones, Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System, Hypatia,Volume 22, Number 1, Winter 2007, p. 186-209

Zackie Achmat, “‘Apostles of civilised vice’: ‘Immoral practices’ and ‘unnatural vice’ in South African prisons and compounds, 1890–1920,” Social Dynamics, 1993 19(2): 92-110.

E. Patrick Johnson, “‘Quare’ Studies, Or (Almost) Everything I know about Queer Studies I Learned From My Grandmother,” and Marlon B. Ross, “Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm” in Queer Black Studies, p. 124-189.

Episode 11: Magnus Berg- Transgender Identity in Cataloging, Power in Pronouns, and Ableism in Hiring Practices

So June is Pride Month. I decided that instead of twice a month, I would do a podcast EVERY WEEK, platforming a queer archive, preservationist or issue. So here we are again! I am really excited. So many critical issues & people to feature.

Last week you met my wonderful colleague and friend Anne Marie Kelly.  This week you will meet the amazing Magnus Berg.

Before ANYTHING I want to promote an event that Magnus is doing in San Francisco THIS THURSDAY the 14th at the place they are interning at, The GLBT Historical Society Archives and Museums. It sounds like the greatest event & if I were local I would sooooo be there! Go to this!!!!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/playback-do-it-yourself-audiovisual-archiving-tickets-45600216475

 

When I first met Magnus at AMIA, I was instantly drawn to their amazing charm and appeal. As you will hear, they are intensely smart and HFS amazing. I wish that instead of this podcast, you could all be in a room with them. Being around Magnus is so much fun. Magnus is just…I can’t put words to it because they made me smile. And again, another wonderful Canadian gift!!

As I state in this episode, we are much stronger with trans archivists, archivists of color, differently abled archivists and marginalized archivists than we are without them. Much stronger. That *is* community, y’all. As Magnus and I work through issues of archival cataloging practices, hiring practices, film festival circuits and my desire to convince Martin Scorsese to donate all of his future funding to transgender film preservation, I think you will agree.

I hope you enjoy this episode.

BIO:

Magnus Berg is a MA candidate in the Film + Photography Preservation and Collections Management program at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. They have worked with audiovisual collections at Visual Studies Workshop, The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Ryerson University, and most recently The GLBT Historical Society Archives. Magnus is the current Co-Chair of the LGBT Committee for the Association of Moving Image Archivists and has presented on audiovisual preservation at Sexuality and Gender Studies and Archival Science conferences in Canada and the United States.

Episode 10: Anne Marie Kelly- the Power of Oral History, a Good Haircut and Preservation As a Political Practice

Not only will this be the 10th episode of Archivist’s Alley but it is also Pride Month. Therefore, this month I thought it would be wonderful to showcase some of the most exciting work and wonderful queer archivists in the preservation community. I hope that you all are as thrilled about it as I am. It’s going to be a Fabulous month, in every sense of the word!

Full disclosure: I was incredibly moved putting together episode 10. Anne Kelly’s work, passion and eloquence is inspirational. I first met her while she was writing an excellent column on Katherine Hepburn called A Year With Kate which we talk about a bit on the show. Thanks to TCM Film Fest, we got to hang out even more and shared such great times. You’ll learn how she moved from TCMFF and this incredible 52-week Kate Hepburn extravaganza to interning with the ultra brilliant Teague Schneiter at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to her current position as the Program Specialist for New Dimensions in Testimony at the USC Shoah Foundation.


But our conversation focuses on much more. We talk about the critical nature of oral history and the oral tradition. Genocide and the fact that it is still a problem. It is on-going and it has not stopped and that many simply associate the term genocide with the Holocaust and that continues to allow people, entire cultures, to disappear.

I talk to Anne about her identity as a queer woman in the archival landscape, community and the thing that has brought her and I together so strongly for so many years: our love for and belief in the revolutionary nature of memory work.

I am so excited to present this episode for you to kick off a month where we need to support and celebrate each other and erase erasure now more than ever.

Guest Bio:

Anne Marie Kelly is a Project Specialist at the USC Shoah Foundation. She is a recent graduate with her Masters in Cinema & Media Studies from USC with publications in The Cine-Files and Spectator. Anne previously worked in film sound restoration for Deluxe Entertainment and consulted at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oral History Projects on the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA Oral History Interviews collection.

Link to the USC Shoah Foundation: https://sfi.usc.edu/