Lesbian Looks showcases cutting edge features, shorts, documentaries, experimental films and new media works not otherwise available to Tucson audiences. We also screen classic films such as Mädchen in Uniform, Desert Hearts, Word is Out, Paris Was a Woman, Before Stonewall, and A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts. Over the years, Lesbian Looks has hosted events at nearly every screen on the University of Arizona campus and throughout the Tucson community. In 2011 we launched Virtual Lesbian Looks, a curated portal to made-for-the-web programming, created by media scholar Tanya Zuk.
The first public program of the fledgling Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona, Lesbian Looks has presented over two hundred fifty films to audiences drawn from campus and the Tucson community, and featured panel discussions on topics ranging from breast cancer to homeless youth to Israeli-Palestinian politics, LGBTQ refugee resettlement, trans identity, borders and immigration, and queer history.
Co-sponsors have included more than twenty departments, colleges and other university units, as well as numerous community organizations.
Lesbian Looks has hosted distinguished filmmakers Monika Treut, Su Friedrich, Barbara Hammer, Michelle Citron, Elle Flanders, Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, Michelle Memran, Megan Rossman and Jen Gilomen; film scholars Richard Dyer and Amy Villarejo; founding director of San Francisco’s Frameline Film Festival, Michael Lumpkin; and Lesbian Herstory Archives founders Joan Nestle (2006) and Deborah Edel (2020).
—Beverly Seckinger
