SAN FRANCISCO -- Early one morning last year, documentary filmmaker Jeff Dupre was driving down Castro Street when he saw a theater marquee proclaiming Out of the Past. He nearly wrecked his car.
Dupre had begun production that day on his first film, also titled Out of the Past. He was relieved to learn that the movie at the Castro Theatre was the 1947 film-noir classic starring Robert Mitchum, and not likely to be confused with his documentary: the story of Utah teen-ager Kelli Peterson and her widely publicized attempts to form a Gay-Straight Alliance at Salt Lake City's East High School in 1996.
Last Monday night Dupre found himself looking up once again from a car window at the Castro Theatre and saw Out of the Past again emblazoned across the art-deco facade. This time there was no chance of a wreck. Dupre was not driving. He was moments away from attending the screening of his film at the 22nd San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Out of the Past received its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. The film links Peterson's ordeal at East High to the struggles of five other lesbian and gay historical figures from ``out of the past.''
Early in the film, the camera pans in close-up across Peterson's handwriting as she reads from a journal entry: ``How can I tell my mother she has a queer for a daughter?''
The ink marks dissolve into those written 300 years earlier by 17th-century Puritan clerk Michael Wigglesworth. The quill script in his journal documents Wigglesworth's torment over the tension between his religious conquests and his sexual desire.
The film then cuts back to Peterson: ``The [Mormon] church taught me that gays were child molesters and an abomination before God. . . . It did not make me want to be one of them.''
Dupre uses a well-fitted patchwork of sepia-toned, archival film, along with black-and-white photos and videotape, to move among several stories: Peterson's; the 30-year ``Boston marriage'' of 19th-century philanthropist Annie Adams Fields and novelist Sarah Orne Jewett; Henry Gerber's founding in 1924 in Chicago of the first American gay-rights organization; Bayard Rustin, a trusted adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., who was forced out of that position by unfounded rumors about the nature of their association; and Barbara Gittings, a '60s activist credited for the removal in 1973 of homosexuality from the American Psychological Association's list of mental illnesses.
Though Dupre gives nearly equal time to each of the six stories, at Monday night's festival premiere Peterson's story was clearly the favorite. No wonder. The film documents how she is catapulted, almost overnight, from her life as an unknown teen into the unexpected and unwanted role of national spokesperson for lesbian and gay rights.
Whether speaking before a school board, the Utah Legislature or the national press, Peterson handles her sudden political and celebrity status with an integrity that belies her age. Thrust before fistfuls of microphones and a national press army, she calmly but emphatically defends her reasons for founding a gay-straight alliance.
She states that the group was formed to end hate, intolerance and fear; to end the misery and isolation of being gay and lesbian in high school; and to end teen-age suicide. ``I don't know of any other club that does that,'' Peterson said.
The cheers and applause from the audience following those statements shook the 70-year-old Castro Theatre with what could have been mistaken as every San Franciscan's greatest fear.
The audience was not as kind to other members of the Utah community represented in Dupre's hourlong film. In a live broadcast from Utah's Capitol Hill, Rod Decker urgently delivers his ``this just breaking on the gay club'' report with tremendous concern in his voice. The inflection became satirical and absurd when met with howls of laughter from the Castro crowd. The audience also hissed, as if engrossed in a melodrama, when an unidentified, anti-gay mother was shown standing before legislators and warning that ``It is the tendency of all clubs to recruit and expand their membership.''
Perhaps the most deeply felt moment Monday night came in the final three frames, which read:
``In 1996, the Utah State Legislature ruled that any group can rent space in a public building. East High School is a public building. The Gay-Straight Alliance now meets every Thursday at 3 p.m.''
The audience leaped to its feet and cheered.
In a question-and-answer session immediately after the screening, Dupre, along with co-producer Eliza Starr Bayard, associate producer Kevin Jennings and festival director Michael Lumpkin, commented on the recent success, and future of Out of the Past.
Since Sundance, the film has been screened in Brazil, Australia, England and Spain. On June 16, it was part of the first celebration of Lesbian and Gay Pride month at the White House. Lumpkin attributed the film's success in part to its dual ability as an educational tool and entertainment.
Dupre attributed the quality of his first film to his years working with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, an experience he deemed better than any film school he might have attended. He also praised those who supported the project.
``Many of them worked for free. Gwyneth Paltrow [who lent her voice to the `Boston marriage' segment] refused to be paid, and Linda Hunt [the narrator] sent the check back.''
Several festivalgoers were curious about Peterson, and wondered where she is today. At the mention of her name, the producers smiled.
``Kelli's going to school now'' said Eliza Starr Byard, ``and staying put in Salt Lake. I teased her on the phone last week, saying, `So when are you moving to San Francisco? When are you moving to New York?' She said, `Are you kidding? I'm staying here in Utah. This is where I belong. This is where I'm needed.' ''
The film is expected to play at Salt Lake City's Tower Theatre in the fall and air nationally on PBS Oct. 15.
Christopher Ossana, a graduate of East High School, is a writer living in San Francisco.
It's out of the closet and onto the screen for a group of gay and lesbian Utah teen-agers. Their controversial student club at East High School is the subject of a documentary premiering today at the Sundance Film Festival.
Out of the Past chronicles the furor surrounding student Kelli Peterson's founding two years ago of a gay-straight alliance at the Salt Lake City school. Despite the film's thorny subject matter, director Jeff Dupre hopes it will eventually be shown in high schools across the country.
``It's nowhere near as racy as `Ellen,' '' says Dupre, referring to the ABC-TV sitcom whose lead character is a lesbian. ``We're not being radical in this film.''
Part contemporary fable, part history lesson, Out of the Past uses Peterson's story to illuminate the lives of five American gays and lesbians dating back to the 17th century. The film spans 300 years of American history, from the secret diary of Puritan cleric Michael Wigglesworth to the pioneering activism of Barbara Gittings in the 1950s and 1960s.
Other historical segments focus on 19th-century novelist Sarah Orne Jewett; Henry Gerber, who founded the country's first gay rights organization in 1924; and Bayard Rustin's role in the civil rights movement for American blacks. These portraits are fleshed out with letters and diaries read by such actors as Gwyneth Paltrow and Edward Norton.
``Gays and lesbians always have been part of the American story,'' says Dupre, a New York filmmaker who worked on Ken Burns' documentary ``The West.'' ``We wanted to find a way to make these stories relevant to high school kids today.''
Enter Kelli Peterson. One month after he began working full-time on Out of the Past, Dupre learned of Peterson and the East High brouhaha. By then, the Salt Lake City school board had banned all extracurricular clubs to keep the gay students from meeting, a decision that led more than 1,000 Utahns to march on Capitol Hill in protest.
Dupre brought a film crew last March to Salt Lake City, where he interviewed Peterson, her friends and her parents and gathered news footage of the controversy from Salt Lake City TV stations. Five months later, a gay East High student captured in the film committed suicide. Out of the Past is dedicated to his memory.
The film, narrated by Oscar-winning actress Linda Hunt (``The Year of Living Dangerously''), will air on PBS in June. Dupre then will distribute the film to high schools in the hopes it will enlighten teen-agers about the gay experience.
Peterson, who has seen a rough cut of the film, finds it fair and accurate. But that does not mean she will be attending each of the film's six Sundance screenings or schmoozing with the Hollywood crowd in Park City.
``I'm not one for the jet set,'' says the 19-year-old, now taking classes at Salt Lake Community College.
Peterson has enjoyed her two years in the spotlight but is tiring of her role as a gay-rights activist.
``People say, `I admire you so much,' and I ask them what they're doing to help [gay rights] and they say, `Nothing.'
``I'm tired of trying to bail everybody out,'' Peterson says. ``I'm trying to get on with my life.''
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