LAVENDER HILL, short documentary (23 mins)
Producer/Writer: Austin Bunn I Cinematographer/Editor: Bob Hazen
Screenings: OutFest 2013 (Premiere–LA), Palm Springs LGBT Film Festival, Inside Out (Toronto, 2014), Oneonta Film Festival 2014 (Best of the Festival), Provincetown International Film Festival, ReelQ (Pittsburgh) (Best of Festival), Pride of the Ocean, CineSlam Film Festival
WATCH IT ONLINE HERE.
SYNOPSIS
In 1973, a motley group of young writers, artists, political activists, and recent college graduates purchased over 80 acres of land outside West Danby, New York to build, with their own hands, a two story home that became Lavender Hill — one of the few gay and lesbian communes in the Back to the Land movement.
In a time when over a dozen “straight” communes thrived in Tompkins County outside Ithaca, Lavender Hill, which expanded to include several homes across the property, was a remarkable experiment in collaboration, gender exploration, and social and political integration between young gay and lesbians in the post-Stonewall era.
Lavender Hill: a love story reveals the rich and complex history of this experiment in intentional living, from its theoretical beginnings in the Gay Liberation Front to its twilight during the AIDS crisis. The documentary features the voices of the former commune members and gay and lesbian activists and historians, along with rare archival 8mm film of the commune during its heyday. Funded, in part, by the Cornell Council for the Arts.