This new documentary explores femme dyke indentities as radical gender practices. Female to Femme denaturalizes gender and pushes for an understanding of femininity as multiple rather than singular, constructed rather than natural. Sexy, smart and funny, Female to Femme features a host of fabulous femmes, including actress and filmmaker Guinivere Turner, novelist Jewelle Gomez, rock stars Leslie Mah and Bitch, professors, activists, artists and dancers. As the directors explore the full range of femme – from tomboy femme, retro femme and rockabilly femme, to casual and high femme – it becomes clear that there’s no one way for a femme to define herself.
Joan Nestle has spent most of her adult life documenting and exploring femme desire. Co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, author of A Restricted Country and A Fragile Union and editor of The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, she fully realizes that gender and sex are still as complicated as ever. Her desire at 66 is to listen to a new generation’s discussion of the body and all its histories.
Joan Nestle’s first appearance at Lesbian Looks was in 2002, for a screening of Joyce Warshow’s biodoc about her life and work, Hand on the Pulse, and we are pleased to welcome her back!