Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation celebrates fifth year with movie “But I’m a Cheerleader”

The collaboration between the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Outfest has achieved leaps and bounds within the area of LGBT film preservation in recent years. Fittingly enough, this year’s fifth anniversary of the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation kicks off with the Jamie Babbit film, “But I’m a Cheerleader” on Feb. 26.

Originally begun to address the crisis in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film archiving, the Legacy Project ensures the preservation and restoration of LGBT films that would otherwise be potentially lost.

While mainstream films are typically archived by corporate studios, most LGBT films are about personal coming-out stories and are therefore usually independent films.

“Films are made on a celluloid material and can last forever, but if stored in a warm or humid environment, they can fade, corrode or disintegrate,” said Kristin Pepe, Legacy Project manager. “Films need to be stored in the proper conditions. The nature of LGBT movies being mostly independently made is really why they are not taken care of properly. … Part of our history can be potentially erased.”

Through their three core aspects of access ““ education, preservation and restoration ““ Pepe said she hopes that these collected films will serve to inform the public about LGBT issues while also educating filmmakers about the importance of putting films into archives to ensure that copies are preserved.

The establishment of the Legacy Project’s collection of more than 13,000 titles, the largest collection of LGBT movies in the world, offers new opportunities for the study of LGBT film. Screenings such as Feb. 26’s showing of “But I’m a Cheerleader” at the Billy Wilder Theater assist in reaching this goal.

“We need to remind ourselves that these films are a historical legacy,” said Shannon Kelley, the head of public programs at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. “They are worth celebrating and treating as a matter of history as much as they are a matter of entertainment.”

Many films screened through the Legacy Project address darker LGBT issues such as abusive homophobic tactics used in the ’50s. But this year, the Legacy Project wanted to start off on a more uplifting note, Pepe said.

“(The project’s aim is to) balance between light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek comedy films and films that are more academically enlightening and address exploitative LGBT issues,” Pepe said.

“But I’m a Cheerleader,” directed by Jamie Babbit in 1999, is a more recent film within the archive’s collection that revolves around a typical high school cheerleader.

Suspected of being a lesbian, the main character, Megan Bloomfield, is sent to the corrective camp “True Directions,” which uses a three-step mantra of discovering yourself, doing the drills and finding your true direction to serve as a mode of “sexual disorientation.” Instead of being “straightened” out, however, the main character ironically discovers her budding lesbianism while at this camp.

“It’s a really unique indie movie,” said second-year English student Casmir Jordan. “It has that quirky vibe that you see in a ton of movies being put out nowadays, but you can still understand the deeper issues that the director is trying to get the audience to key in on.”

With its balanced share of both funny and awkward, “But I’m a Cheerleader” was chosen to open this year’s Outfest and ULCA Archive collaboration by having the potential to bring people together in its outright showing of how silly homophobia really is, said Pepe.

“”˜But I’m a Cheerleader’ is a very entertaining comedy, very light-hearted … whereas some of the other things we are working on are pretty serious in tone,” Kelley said. “On the occasion of celebrating this five-year partnership (between Outfest and UCLA), we wanted to do something very fittingly celebratory to begin this year’s programming.”