COMPTON’S ’22
2023 | 18m
Three years before Stonewall, on an unknown date in August 1966, trans sex workers and drag queens rioted against police violence at Gene Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. There was no news coverage, and the arrest records no longer exist. Decades later, trans historian Susan Stryker unearthed the history of the riot and interviewed surviving Compton’s Queens.
Compton's ’22 creates an intergenerational conversation between these oral histories and trans artists today, using performance to imagine an interpretive archive that stands in for the absence of historical documentation. The film aims to counter the erasure and deradicalization of our history, and underscore the crucial role of intergenerational knowledge and solidarity in the ongoing struggle for queer liberation.
SELECTED SCREENINGS
Trans+ Justice: Then, Now, and Forever, 2024
(American LGBTQ+ Museum x NewFest x The Center)
Global Audiovisual Archiving Conference, 2024
(TIFF x Archive/Counter-Archive x Eye Filmmuseum)
BFI Flare (Five Films for Freedom), 2024
Athens International Film Festival, 2024
Detroit Institute of Arts, 2024
The Feminist Institute Memory Lab Showcase, 2024
American Documentary and Animation Film Festival, 2024
San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, 2024
Outfest, 2023
Cucalorus Film Festival, 2023
Baby Teeth Film Festival, 2023
NewFest, 2023