Armistead Maupin, the author of the “Tales of the City” series and “Babycakes” and subject of the film “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin,” will appear at this summer’s Kaleidoscope Film Festival, the Film Society of Little Rock’s LGBT-focused film event to take place Aug. 11-19 at Argenta Community Theater, South on Main and Flyway Brewing. Maupin appears at South on Main in partnership with the Oxford American Magazine.
The festival opens with “Hello Again,” a musical depiction of 10 love affairs across a century, starring Audra McDonald, Martha Plimpton, Cheyenne Jackson and others.
Cheryl Dunye, star and director of the feature film, “The Watermelon Woman,” is slated to appear at the festival for a screening celebrating the 20th anniversary of the acclaimed film’s release. “The Watermelon Woman” — often cited as the first feature-length film directed by and about a black lesbian — explored themes of sexuality, race and economics by depicting a search for the identity of an uncredited black actress in a 1930s Hollywood film called “Plantation Memories.”
Also on the lineup at Kaleidoscope 2017: a culinary event with celebrity chef Crystal “Chef Pink” DeLongpre and her wife, Courtney Rae of Bacon & Brine; a drag queen brunch, and other film screenings, including “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin,” “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson,” “Jesus,” “the Ornithologist,” “Princess Cyd,” “The Wound,” “Saturday Church,” “Brothers of the Night,” “Signature Move,” “Small Talk” and “The Untamed, as well as “The Revival,” filmed in Arkansas by Jennifer Gerber, the interim director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.