QDoc co-founders David Weissman (left) and Russ Gage (right). Weissman says, of their curatorial approach, "We basically are always sniffing around to see what's out there."
David Robinson / Courtesy of David Weissman
Hard to believe, but for all the queer film that has blossomed on the festival circuit, there is only one LGBT documentary film festival on the planet: the Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival, or QDoc for short.
This month the festival turns 10. To celebrate, we spoke with filmmaker and QDoc co-founder David Weissman.
This thoughtfully-curated fest has a number of interesting films on view, including
“Southwest of Salem: the Story of the San Antonio Four,”
which tells a devastating story of how four lesbians were convicted and served 15-plus years in prison for a sex abuse crime that never happened.
Weissman is also screening one of his own projects this year. It’s called “Conversations with Gay Elders,” and it treads the line between oral history and documentary. Weissman, whose prior films include histories of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Bay Area and the groundbreaking drag act The Cockettes, told us he considers himself something of a reluctant filmmaker.
“I get pushed into doing what I do because there’s a story I think that needs to be told,” Weissman said, “and that nobody will tell it if I don’t.”
Daniel Maloney, one of Weissman's subjects for "Conversations with Gay Elders," says he gravitated toward sports as a way out of the small town where he grew up.
Courtesy of David Weissman
Weissman started filming in depth interviews with elderly gay men who came of age before gay liberation, men like Daniel Maloney, who grew up black and gay in a Pennsylvania town of about 10,000 people. Another subject, Robert Dockendorff, is a military veteran who was born to an Iowa farming family.
Weissman says the project was structured around process rather than a final cut.
"I got a grant early on that enabled me to work so I'm not so much focused on the delivery, unlike my earlier films," he says.
This time, he's trying to work as much as possible with young gay men as his production team, and as editors.
"The whole project has become a kind of intergenerational conversation," Weissman says. “We’re one of the very few minorities who can’t learn our culture and our heritage from our parents.”
Robert Dockendorff tells in Weissman's film project about the compartmentalization that was essential to his life as a closeted young man in the Midwest.
Courtesy of David Weissman
QDoc began at a time when both Weissman and co-founder Russ Gage were both relatively recent transplants from San Francisco. Both were deeply involved in the Bay Area film community, and missed the vibe.
“What we’re hoping,” Weissman said, “is that people will come to QDoc and realize that sitting in a room with other queer people and watching these movies isn’t available anywhere else, and that there’s a tremendous rush being in that context.”
May 19—22 at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre.