50 Years of Fabulous

Synopsis

50 Years of Fabulous tells the story of the Imperial Council of San Francisco — the oldest LGBT charity organization in the world — from its founding in 1965 by the legendary José Sarría, through the AIDS crisis, through fifty years of coronations, benefits, and quiet community care. Sarría was the first openly gay man to run for political office in the United States, in 1961. The organization he founded, a self-described campy social club governed by drag queens and open to "gay men, lesbians, transgendered people, bisexuals and all allies," became a template for LGBTQ civic life that now spans dozens of cities worldwide.

The film pulls open an archive that no institution ever bothered to collect: the photographs, costumes, and oral history the Court's own members kept, because someone had to.

Director & producer statement

I came to this story as an outsider twice over — an immigrant, and a documentarian who wasn't there in 1965. What I found was a community that had done the work of remembering itself, for decades, without waiting for permission. The film is my attempt to hand that remembering to a wider audience before the people who lived it are gone.

This is also a film about aging in a community that was told for decades it wouldn't get to grow old. Every subject in the film lost friends in the '80s and '90s. The movie is the thing that happens when people who weren't supposed to make it make it anyway.

Festival list

• Frameline 38

  Official Selection · San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival

• 2018QDocs

  Opening Film · international queer documentary festival

• 20+ film festivals

  Community and festival screenings across the US and internationally

• Distribution

  Frameline (educational youth programs) · PBS · JustWatch

Credits

Director Jethro Patalinghug

Producer Marc Smolowitz

Executive Producer David Lassman

Original Score Jordain Wallace

Full crew credits available in the press kit.