While the project of unearthing primary lexical sources and still images documenting queer histories has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its pioneers, relevant moving images from the pre-YouTube LGBTQ past have remained elusive.

Queer Social Historian Sharon Thompson's presentation, titled "The Thrill of the Hunt: Rare Clips & Amazing Stories from an Accidental Queer Archive," introduces rich new finds in this area that at once support previous scholarship and offer fresh insight. While clips from the mostly silent films roll, Thompson will narrate the private circumstances of the filmmakers and their subjects and those of the Lesbian Home Movie Project itself, whose mission is to find, preserve, and document lesbian amateur film, which represents at once an adventure in research and archiving, and an addiction.

In her presentation titled "The Internal Archive: Re-Imagining the Amateur," Film Scholar and Memoirist Melinda Barlow will explore an autobiographical gesture informing the work of three American women, herself and experimental filmmaker Jeanne Liotta, and photographer Laura Shill -- each of whom has invested home movies, vernacular photographs, and/or found objects with personal significance. At once drawn to and disturbed by what these artifacts reveal and conceal about the social construction of femininity, each has preserved her salvaged treasures in a private collection, where they serve as mirrors, talismans, reminders, and warnings.

Refreshments will be provided.