Allgo is co-sponsoring a showing of Cheryl Dunye’s new film OWLS: Older Wiser Lesbians on September 11, 2010. Director Cheryl Dunye will also be on hand to discuss her motivation in making the film and her career as an out black lesbian director in the independent film scene.
At first glance, OWLS is a murder mystery in which two lesbian elders accidentally kill a much younger genderqueer lesbian and then try to cover it up. The real story however is about intergenerational conflict and competing visions of lesbian culture.
In keeping with her longstanding thread of connecting history and cinema, Dunye examines the lesbian utopian movements of the past that rejected the image of lesbians as doomed, failed women, and tragic spinsters and instead dared to dream “somewhere there is a place for us.” She asks us to think about what it meant to have lesbian only spaces and collectives in a time when same sex attracted women were incarcerated in prisons or mental health facilities or otherwise physically, sexually, economically or emotionally punished for daring to love and how those spaces shaped the optimism of lesbian movements in the 80s only to become a battleground between the women who sustained those movements and brought them into the modern era and younger women who grew up in a world in which nationally syndicated papers refer to “lesbian chic”, out lesbians host talk shows and news shows, and questions about who counts as a woman 
requires a radical rethink of the biological determinism that once defined not only lesbian utopia but feminism itself. The film questions why the lessons learned and the activism done by these women is undervalued by both straight people and younger lesbians. It questions why places and spaces are shrinking or seemingly shrinking for lesbians of a certain age even while younger women thrive on the privileges gained. And while it no doubt maintains the comic timing and humorous endings that typify Dunye’s work, it should and aught to open conversations about intergenerational community and activism that embraces both critical changes in perspective by younger lesbians and the knowledge and strength of those who came before amongst lesbians and within the larger social justice community.
Please note, I have not yet seen this film in its entirety and cannot vouch for how it handles gender or younger lesbian characters. If you have seen the film, please weigh in in the comment section.
If you would like to see the screening:
When: Saturday, September 11, 2010, at 11:30 am
General Admission $10, Students & Seniors $5
Where: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival at the Alamo Drafthouse South (1120 S. Lamar Blvd Austin TX)
Related Articles
- Cheryl Dunye’s The OWLs Screening Tonight at Outfest (pinkbananaworld.com)
- Thoughts on The Owls (bilerico.com)
Like a Whisper 