For nearly two weeks in early summer, the annual Tribeca Film Festival takes over Lower Manhattan, staging a series of screenings and events to showcase its expansive offerings. But despite a lineup that now includes podcasts, video games, talks, live concerts and more, visual storytelling remains the chief draw. At this year’s festival, which marks the 23rd edition and runs from June 5 to June 16, audiences should pay special attention to a set of documentaries nestled under Tribeca’s LGBTQ-inclusive programming.
Covering subjects ranging from music icons of the 1980s and ‘90s to Hollywood royalty, long-haul truck drivers and comedy legends, these documentaries represent highly specific storytelling that intrigues and inspires in a climate in which audiences are already aware that queer people exist.
“One of the things that I think Tribeca does really well is reflect what people are currently talking about, where people are,” said Tribeca's lead programmer, Faridah Gbadamosi, who formerly served as artistic director for Outfest, a Los Angles-based LGBTQ film festival.
“We are now at this point in time in which a lot of the audience is pretty well-versed on queer identities — regardless of where they stand on them — so I want these films to feel like we’re in conversation with the general narrative around queerness, rather than trying to introduce people to it,” Gbadamosi said of this year's LGBTQ-inclusive lineup.
Looking through the submissions for this year, Gbadamosi said, she and her fellow programmers noticed that much of what people were talking about had to do with mental health and legacy — two issues that take center stage in Neil Berkeley’s “Group Therapy” and Page Hurwitz’s “Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution.”
In “Group Therapy,” which will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 6, actor and comedian Neil Patrick Harris leads a group of stand-up comedians, which includes Nicole Byer, Tig Notaro and Atsuko Okatsuka, through a frank conversation about grappling with mental health issues and breaking cycles of silence.
In “Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution,” which premieres at the festival on June 7 ahead of its Netflix release, multiple generations of joke-tellers join together to trace the role of queer comedians over the past century. Featuring the voices of trailblazers like Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhard and Margaret Cho, as well as younger comedians like Mae Martin and Joel Kim Booster, “Outstanding” is an engaging look at queer women’s role in bringing early visibility to LGBTQ comics and the power of stand-up that embraces personal storytelling.
The confluence of legacy and mental health is perhaps at its most powerful in Bruce David Klein’s “Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story.” The documentary, which will have its world premiere at Tribeca on June 12, traces the life and career of prolific entertainer Liza Minnelli, daughter of Hollywood royalty Judy Garland and director Vincent Minnelli. Through interviews with its subject, her close friends and industry experts, the film, which includes previously unseen footage, explores how Minnelli’s dazzling persona emerged through the influence of figures like Kay Thompson, Halston and Bob Fosse — and in spite of the big and small tragedies that dotted her life.
“Art is, for a lot of people, a way of dealing with mental health concerns and traumas; art has always been in some way therapy,” Gbadamosi said, speaking to the themes running through this year’s documentary selections. “And storytelling, for a lot of people, is about getting their [own] stories out and dealing with these issues.”
The year’s defining themes also appear in a selection of documentaries about queer music icons who will be traveling to Tribeca to give rare performances alongside the films’ world premieres.
Among those titles is “Linda Perry: Let It Die Here,” Don Hardy’s intimate look at the life of the 4 Non Blondes singer and songwriter, and “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken,” Brian Morrow and Amy Scott’s episodic documentary detailing how Etheridge found healing following the death of her son via her relationship with residents of a Kansas correctional facility. In another contemplative title, ‘90s folk powerhouse Ani DiFranco emerges from years of focusing on family and a quieter existence in Dana Flor’s “1-800-ON-HER-OWN,” which premieres June 10. Flor’s film looks at how DiFranco became the voice of an angry, activist-minded generation and changed the music landscape with the founding of her independent label, Righteous Babe Records.
But not all of the selections center on well-known figures like Tomlin and Bernhard, Minnelli and DiFranco. Some of this year’s most intriguing offerings — like “Sabbath Queen,” Sandi DuBowski’s account of a 39th-generation rabbi’s embracing of a less restrictive brand of Judaism via drag, and “Driver,” Nesa Azimi’s profile of a female truck driver fighting for the rights of her fellow road warriors — tell stories about niche, relatively unknown or forgotten figures whose lives are exceptional in their own right.
Among them, Kim Reed’s “I’m Your Venus” — which centers on the untimely death of “Paris Is Burning” star Venus Xtravaganza — stands out for portraying a dynamic rarely seen on film: a biological family striving to understand more about the transgender sister and aunt they lost to violence. The film, which premieres June 6, follows Venus’ biological family as they work with her chosen one to reinvestigate the ballroom star’s murder, offering a modern tale of unconditional acceptance.
“In some ways, that movie is what Tribeca is: this idea of meeting the moment — and then some,” Gbadamosi said. “We have a hard time when people are able to be better and become the version of themselves that we want them to be. One of the things that we are tasked with as curators of the festival is meeting the reality that people are changing and [asking] what sort of imagery do we engage with to show that people can change.”
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