Join filmmakers Gregorio Davila & Todd A. Henry and Minki Hong for a special Double Feature Screening! Jeanne Córdova: Butches, Lies & Feminism & Paradise (2023): Revisiting South Korea’s Gay/Queer Pasts will feature two films followed by a discussion and Q&A.
Jeanne Córdova: Butches, Lies & Feminism
Winner of several film festival awards including the GRAND JURY PRIZE at OUTFEST 2017 for BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT, Jeanne Córdova: Butches, Lies & Feminism creatively employs the few surviving archival interviews to illuminate a forthright, outspoken, dynamic and sexy, feminist, old school butch who was unstoppable in her quest for equality & fairness for lesbians, women and the queer community.
Paradise (2023): Revisiting South Korea’s Gay/Queer Pasts
Paradise revisits South Korea’s era of authoritarian development (1970s-1980s) through the lens of queer livelihood. Despite the harsh realities of successive dictatorships, compulsory military service, and expectations of marriage and childbirth, six elderly gay men reveal how they converted second-run theaters and nearby bars into popular sites of erotic liberation, same-sex friendships, and romantic encounters. Using rare footage of Seoul’s only extant second-run movie house, visual archives, and historical animation, Paradise documents South Korea’s vibrant gay underground before the solidification of democracy and the introduction of the internet in the 1990s. Along the way, it follows the pain and joy of queer citizens, whose stories appear for the first time in this empowering film of self-discovery and community building.
Participant Bios:
Gregorio Davila
Under his production company, EXOTICO FILMS, Gregorio has written, produced, edited, and directed two short films and two feature films. He made his first feature documentary in 2001, entitled Bent Fest 2001, a documentary account of a five-day music festival in Seattle that featured an all-queer band line-up. His two short films, NANCY FROM EAST SIDE CLOVER, and JEANNE CÓRDOVA: BUTCHES, LIES & FEMINISM, won multiple film festival awards around the world, the latter taking home the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest 2017 for BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT.
His second feature-length documentary, L.A. A QUEER HISTORY, a film showcasing the rich LGBTQ+ history of the Los Angeles area, is the winner of a 2022 NETA PUBLIC MEDIA AWARD, a 2022 MIPCOM DIVERSIFY AWARD at Cannes, and two 2022 LOS ANGELES PRESS CLUB AWARDS. His latest documentary feature, UNIDAD: GAY AND LESBIAN LATINOS UNIDOS, a film about the first Queer Latine organization in the country (Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos), which formed in Los Angeles in 1981, won a 2024 LOS ANGELES PRESS CLUB AWARD. Both L.A. A QUEER HISTORY and UNIDAD are currently available to stream on PBS.
Todd A. Henry (Professor of History, UCSD) is a specialist of modern and contemporary Korea. He authored Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (University of California Press, 2014) and Profits of Queerness: Media, Biomedicine, and Citizenship in Authoritarian South Korea, 1950-1980 (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2026), and edited Queer Korea (Duke University Press, 2020). Currently, Dr. Henry is writing Bodies of Excess: Sex Tourism, the AIDS Crisis, and Transgender Advocacy in Globalizing South Korea, 1980-1995, and directing a feature-length documentary on South Korea’s first male fashion designer, André Kim (1935-2010), and his relationship to Hawaiʻi.
This program is organized by Gregorio Davila & Todd A. Henry and Minki Hong and is co-presented with the Los Angeles LGBT Center as part of Circa: Queer Histories Festival 2025, presented by One Institute.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center is a safe and welcoming place where the LGBTQ+ community finds help, hope, and support when it is needed the most.