Golden Threads - Filmmakers


	Broadcast Schedule Talkback

An Interview with GOLDEN THREADS Filmmakers Lucy Winer and Karen Eaton

Question: Do lesbians have special concerns as they age?

Lucy Winer: They do. Particularly around issues of isolation. Many are economically vulnerable. Some are alienated from family members. Those who have lived in the closet all their life may find that when a partner dies there is no one to understand the profundity of their loss. On the other hand, elderly lesbians may also have inner resources that some of their heterosexual counterparts lack: an independent spirit, a tendency to question the status quo and to take risks.

Q: In your published material you refer to Golden Threads as an organization for mid-life and old lesbians rather than using the softer term 'older.' Are you making a point here?

Karen Eaton: Christine did. She was adamant about saying 'old.' She loved 'old.' She loved her age spots, her wrinkles. What did she used to say? 'Here I thought these age spots were decoration.' She did not try to soften or gentrify the term.

Q: The collage animation in the film in which you lampoon your own fear of aging is a fun counterpart to the documentary. What inspired that?

Winer: When Christine had her stroke I was devastated. It was at that time that the idea of the animation occurred to me. But I kept trying to make these ideas of cartoons go away because they seemed so hopelessly irreverent. Why did I want to introduce animation, focusing primarily on my fears of aging? It was very problematic as to whether it would even work stylistically. But I think it gives the audience permission to have a fuller experience of what they're seeing.

Q: You say in the film that you were surprised to find yourself dreading old age. Don't we all? Why should you be immune?

Winer: Intellectually I believe that we have value at all ages. But suddenly I found that emotionally I believed otherwise. I didn't like seeing wrinkles. I didn't like feeling physically weaker. I was dismayed by the signs of age. I looked in the mirror and thought - from here on in it's decay. I was devastated. I thought I was simply above all that. I'd never experienced such a breach between my ideals and my reality. It was immense. And just as I had previously confronted my own internalized homophobia, I had to begin to confront my own internalized ageism.

Q: One of the things that is tantalizing about the film is Christine's history. At one point she is identified as a horse farmer, a businesswoman, a former nun. She also was hospitalized in a state mental institution against her will for five years. Why don't you explore more of that?

Winer: The plan was for us to film the Ninth Annual Golden Threads meeting, to focus on the three day celebration. Then we were to regroup and travel up to Northampton to film Christine's account of her personal life. That never happened because of her stroke. For a while it looked like we would never know what had happened in much of her life. But it turned out she had an unpublished autobiography. There's an account of her hospitalization in it but it's rather hard to follow. For a while Karen and I did debate whether to make an attempt to find out how this incredibly vital, vigorous person could have been hospitalized against her will for so many years.

Eaton: But in the end we were more interested in Christine's ability to transform herself and have the kind of life she wanted after an experience like that. As fascinating as the details of her hospitalization might have been, we felt the story of the organization she founded was much more powerful and provocative.

Q: Christine died in 1998. Did she ever get to see the film?

Winer: What happened was that SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment) chose Christine to receive their Lifetime Achievement Award in November of 1998. So we raised the money to bring her from the nursing home to New York City. There was a big hullabaloo. It was like Queen Victoria was arriving. She had her own van and entourage. It was amusing because far better known and more visible individuals like Quentin Crisp and Ginny Apuzzo were also receiving these awards and Christine totally stole the show. When she was brought out on-stage in her wheelchair the entire audience stood up and applauded her. Then we took her back to the hotel and showed her the finished film. We had finished it only days before. We were terribly sad but not really surprised when she died about a month later. I think she felt her job was finished.

Q: What's next for the film after its numerous festival showings and public television broadcast?

Eaton: We're working with SAGE and The Brookdale Center on Aging to develop a curriculum for using the film as a training piece to help people who work with the aged to become more sensitive to the special needs and issues of lesbian and gay seniors. We hear so many poignant stories about people who have been partners for fifty or sixty years that end up in a nursing home where they can't even share the same room. The complete invisibility and ignorance of the fact that lesbians have rich lives and histories - that's one of the real legacies of this film, besides the fact that Golden Threads, as an organization, is living on and thriving.

Interview by Gerard Robinson