Fabulous! The Story Of Queer Cinema

 Lisa Ades is a documentary filmmaker who has produced and directed films for PBS and cable television for more than 20 years. Her acclaimed film, Miss America, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival before its broadcast on the PBS series American Experience in 2002. Previously, she produced award-winning films with Ric Burns, including New York, a ten-hour series (PBS, 1999, Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award), The Way West (PBS, 1995), and The Donner Party (PBS, 1992). Prior to that, she was a producer at WNET/Thirteen on The 11th Hour and Metroline. Documentaries for cable television include Beauty in a Jar (A&E, 2003), In the Company of Women (IFC, 2004), and Indie Sex (IFC, 2007). She is producing and directing GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II, a documentary for broadcast on PBS. Her production company is Turquoise Films, Inc. in New York City.
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Lesli Klainberg is an award-winning producer and director whose documentaries have screened at film festivals such as Berlin, Sundance, Outfest and Frameline, and have been broadcast on networks including Cinemax, AMC, A&E, The Independent Film Channel (IFC), WE and PBS and the owner of Orchard Films.

In 2007, she produced the documentary mini-series, Indie Sex, which explores different aspects of sexuality in cinema. The three episodes Indie Sex: Teens, Indie Sex: Extremes and Indie Sex: Censored (which she also directed) premiered on IFC in 2007.

Other Orchard Film projects include Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (2006, IFC) a feature length documentary which explores the history of American independent gay and lesbian cinema; In the Company of Women (2004, IFC), a documentary about women in independent film; Indie Sex: Taboos (2001, IFC), which was the first in the Indie Sex series; Beauty in a Jar (A&E, 2003) which tells the story of the American beauty and cosmetics industry; Directed by Alan Smithee (AMC, 2002) about the pseudonym used by film directors; and Miss America (PBS/American Experience, 2001) a history of the Miss America Pageant.

Ms. Klainberg is also the producer of Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End (1996), which won the audience award for documentary at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and served as Series Producer of Showtime's six-part documentary series, The 20th Century, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Barry Levinson, and Garry Marshall, among others. She also produced The Real Ellen Story (1997) (TV), a film about the making of the "coming out" episode of the sitcom Ellen, which was broadcast on Channel Four and Bravo.

In 1994, she received a CableAce Award for her work as Supervising Producer of the HBO documentary Mo' Funny: Black Comedy in America (1993) (TV).

Ms. Klainberg spent five years at WNET/Thirteen working as a producer and coordinating producer on numerous documentary and public affairs programs.

She has served on the boards of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and Outfest, the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
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 Todd Haynes was always interested in art, and made amateur movies and painted while he was still a child. He attended Brown university and majored in art and semiotics. After he graduated he moved to New York City and made the controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988). The movie uses dolls instead of actors to tell the the story of the late Karen Carpenter. The movie was a success at several film festivals, and because of a lawsuit by Richard Carpenter (over musical rights) is very hard to see but it is a true classic for bootleg video buyers. His first feature, Poison (1991) was even more controversial. The film was attacked by conservatives and Christians who said it was pornographic, but it won the Grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It is now considered a seminal work of the new queer cinema. His short film Dottie Gets Spanked (1993) was aired on PBS. His next feature film Safe (1995) told the story of a women played by his good friend, Julianne Moore, suffering from a breakdown caused by a mysterious illness. Many thought the film was a metaphor of the Aids virus. The movie was a considered to be an outstanding work and one of the best films of the year. In Velvet Goldmine (1998), starring Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor, he combines the visual style of 60s/70s art films and his love for glam rock music to tell the story of a fictional rock star's rise and fall. Dem Himmel so fern (2002), set in the 1950s and starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, is about a Connecticut housewife who discovers that her husband is gay, and has an affair with her black gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert. The film was a critical and box office success, garnering four Academy Awards. It was hailed as a breakthrough for independent film, and brought Haynes mainstream recognition. With I'm Not There (2007), Haynes returned to the theme of musical legend bio, portraying Bob Dylan via seven fictive characters played by six different actors. The film brought him critical claim, with special attention to the casting of Cate Blanchett as arguably the most convincing of the Dylan characters, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. In 2011, Haynes directed Mildred Pierce, a five-hour miniseries for HBO starring Kate Winslet in the title role. His new feature film Carol (2015) with Cate Blanchett premiered at the Cannes International Festival 2015 to rave reviews and won Best Actress for Rooney Mara.
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Rose Troche was born in 1964 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She is a director and producer, known for Go Fish (1994), The Safety of Objects (2001) and Kreuz und queer (1998).

Gus Van Sant was born in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, the son of a travelling salesman. During his early years his family moved constantly, but Van Sant took refuge in artistic pursuits—particularly painting and making semi-autobiographical super-8 films.

He entered the art school at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1970, and it was here that Van Sant came to experience the alternative cinema of such avant-garde directors as Andy Warhol, which became a catalyst for his own studies in filmmaking.

After an unsuccessful period in Hollywood in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Van Sant moved to New York City, honing his skills directing commercials. During his New York period, he saved the money required to produce his first feature film, Mala Noche (1985). A success on the festival circuit, it established a number of recurring themes in Van Sant’s work and brought his name to the attention of Universal. The studio eventually turned down the ideas the openly gay Van Sant pitched, perhaps due to the controversial nature of his preferred subjects.

Returning to independent production, Van Sant made the films Universal had declined—Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), which showcased his affinity for society’s fringe-dwellers, such as drug-dealers and gay hustlers, and featured established young actors, Matt Dillon, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, whose reputations no doubt helped to raise Van Sant’s profile.

His subsequent film, however, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994), was a commercial and critical disappointment, and saw Van Sant return to Hollywood production for his next film, the much-lauded black comedy To Die For (1995), which earned Nicole Kidman a Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical.

Having made his reputation with small arthouse films, Van Sant was finally accepted into mainstream Hollywood with 1997’s Good Will Hunting, which earned nine Oscar nominations, winning two.

His next film project was a 1998 homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho; indeed, it was a shot-by-shot remake of the original, albeit in colour.

More recently, Van Sant has directed a trio of films about death: Gerry (2002); Elephant (2003), which won both the Best Director and Palme d’Or at Cannes that year; and Last Days (2005), which was also awarded at Cannes.
-madman.com