Pride began with rebellion. The Kopkind Colony, the living memorial to the late radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, honors both as it begins its summer season of activities.
First up, “CineSlam,” Kopkind’s annual Pride Month film fest of LGBTQ+ short films. The screenings will be held at the Latchis Theatre on Main Street in downtown Brattleboro Saturday, June 28, at 4 p.m.
This year’s lineup includes foreign and domestic films, comedy and drama, animation, and experimental documentary.
“The selection of national and international films spans genres, subjects, and emotions,” wrote organizers in a news release, “a kaleidoscopic expression of LGBTQ+ life and experience.” There will be comfortable seating in the main theater and, at intermission, Pride Cake. For tickets, see filmfreeway.com/cineslam/tickets.
The next afternoon, Sunday, June 28, Kopkind will revisit a tradition for a new season with an early summer “Raising the Rainbow Late Brunch,” with the writer and thinker Roger Lancaster, at Tree Frog Farm, 158 Kopkind Road in Guilford.
There will be food beginning at 2 p.m., followed by a talk on themes central to Roger’s most recent book about working-class gay life, The Struggle to Be Gay: In Mexico, for Example. Topics will include “the urgency of desire,” the salience of class and material want in the creation of identity, the universal necessity of “vistas of freedom,” connection, a better life.
The talk will be followed by discussion and birthday cake. There is no charge for Sunday’s event (donations will be gratefully accepted). People must make a reservation, though, so organizers will have a count for food. Contact JoAnn Wypijewski at [email protected].
Since 1999, The Kopkind Colony has put on public events and brought together journalists, activists, and documentary filmmakers for seminars and retreats in Guilford, where Andy Kopkind spent 25 summers with his life partner, John Scagliotti, a pioneer in gay media and the project’s administrator.
Kopkind follows in Andy’s spirit of “thinking deeply, analyzing astutely, living expressively, and extending the field for freedom, pleasure and imagination.”
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.