Directed by Deborah Craig, Sylvia Turchin and Ondine Rarey, the film benefits from lots of archive footage of Sally addressing rallies and appearing in TV debates, as well as contemporary interviews with her and her fellow activists.
What emerges is a portrait of a well-educated woman in conservative Texas whose homosexuality threatened her career. So this outwardly conventional woman took the decision to give up tenure and went to San Francisco where she could finally be out and proud. With her fellow academics she created the first ever women's history courses and with her fellow activists she lobbied against legislation that would restrict gay people's employment rights. She even wrote a work of utopian fiction arguing for lesbian separatism! That ideal became a reality when she and her friends and lovers bought land in rural California and built their own cabins.
But sooner or later these women left to rejoin mainstream society. Complex relationships started and ended. This clear-eyed documentary makes it clear that Sally could be challenging to be around: her charisma matched with bossy self-centredness. But my goodness that charisma and good humour and love shines through as we see the older Sally interviewed, the last remaining commune dweller. It's evident how far she is loved in her local community and the goodwill that she has engendered.
I love documentaries like this - that take us into a part of the world or a slice of history that we should know about. It's education with a light touch, and with an importance beyond the LGBTQIA community given Sally Gearheart's importance to broader social history. Sadly, the power of the film also lies in its relevance to contemporary battles that have to be fought once again against rising bigotry and prejudice.
SALLY! has a running time of 96 minutes. The film is playing the festival circuit.
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