feature length films
queer, broke, & amazing!
Exploring economic justice for Queer & Trans people
Queer, Broke & Amazing! is an inspiring exploration of the struggles and triumphs of low-income LGBTQ+ people and their communities in the queer coastal meccas of the U.S. and points in-between—from the Deep South, Midwest, Navajo Nation, and Southwest to the Borderlands. Distilled from interviews with over 200 queer people and their fierce allies, the documentary refreshingly challenges the myth of gay affluence to reveal an extraordinary world of resilient LGBTQ+ people trying to survive, thrive, and get everyone free amidst plenty, and in an era of unprecedented hatred and legislative attacks against them.
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Queer, Broke & Amazing! features LGBTQ community leaders and queer icons, including Angela Y. Davis, Barbara Smith, Arthur Avilés, Clair Farley, Kay Ulanday Barrett, Kenyon Farrow, Mary Hooks and Anandrea Molina. It also features many more whose names you may not know, but whose lives and stories about poverty, exclusion, violence, and their fierce resistance breathe life into democratic and liberatory visions that just might lead all of us in the direction of freedom.
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Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Studio Program Residency Award (https://wexarts.org/film-video-studio-residencies). Post-Production 2019 in person, 2020-2024 virtual.
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The film's fine cut won the Bayard Rustin Best LGBTQ Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS, March 2023).
89 MINS. © QUAD PRODUCTIONS 2024. English and Spanish subtitles.
América’s Home
Not Everything of Value is for Sale
América’s Home
is an inspiring documentary about senior citizens and young people in Puerto Rico and Chicago struggling to save their homes and communities from being bulldozed and disappeared. Filmed over four years in more than a dozen communities from Santurce to Las Gladiolas, Campo Alegre, La Ciudadela, Paseo Caribe and La Perla to Chicago’s Lincoln Park and Humboldt Park, América’s Home is an enchanting panorama of the transformative power of the cultural arts, community and belonging. It is a testament to the resilience of the Puerto Rican people on the island and in Chicago.
Before Hurricane Maria lacerated Puerto Rico, América “Meca” Sorrentini-Blaut, a septuagenarian on fixed income, struggled to transform her family’s home into Casa Sofia, a cultural center named after her mother. When developers offered Meca $2-million dollars to knock down Casa Sofia, she turned them down. Meca, her contemporaries and young people in a dozen communities across rapidly gentrifying San Juan fought, and sometimes won, to save their homes and neighborhoods from being bulldozed and disappeared by condo and hotel developers. As one activist observes, “Not everything of value is for sale.”
América’s Home was completed through a Film/Video Studio Program Post-Production Residency Award from the Wexner Center for the Arts.
63 MINS. © QUAD PRODUCTIONS 2014. Spanish and English with English subtitles
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Mountains that take wing
Thirteen years, two inspiring women, both radical activists – one conversation.
Mountains That Take Wing features conversations that span 13 years between two formidable women whose lives and political work remain at the epicenter of the most important civil rights struggles in the US. Through the intimacy and depth of conversations, we learn about Davis, an internationally renowned scholar-activist and 88-year-old Kochiyama, a revered grassroots community activist and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee's shared experiences as political prisoners and their profound passion for justice.
Illustrated with rarely-seen photographs and footage of extraordinary speeches and events from the early 1900s to the ’60s and through 2009, the topics of this rich conversation range from critical, but often forgotten role of women in 20th century social movements to the importance of cross-cultural/cross-racial alliances; from America’s WWII internment camps to Japan’s “Comfort Women”; from Malcolm X to the prison industrial complex; and from war to cultural arts. On subjects ranging from the vital but largely erased role of women in social movements of the 20th century, community empowerment, to the prison industrial complex, war and the cultural arts, Davis' and Kochiyama's comments offer critical lessons for understanding our nation's most important social movements and tremendous hope for its youth and the future.
Directed, produced, photographed, recorded & edited by C. A. Griffith & H. L. T. Quan, along with Co-editor Paul Hill, this documentary was completed through a prestigious, Art & Technology post-production residency award from Wexner Center for the Arts (2009-2010). Mountains that Take Wing is distributed by Women Make Movies and available for you to buy or rent.
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honors & awards
QUAD is honored to be recognized by international film festivals for its work.
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Queer, Broke, & Amazing!
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A fine cut of the documentary won the Bayard Rustin Best LGBTQ Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists/NCOBPS (2023)
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Mountains That Take Wing—Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation On Life, Struggles & Liberation
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San Francisco Black Film Festival, Winner, St. Clair Bourne Award for Best Feature Documentary
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Some Prefer Cake Lesbian Film Festival – Bologna, Italy – Winner, Audience Award for Best Feature Film
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COMMFEST (Global) Community Film Festival – Toronto, Canada – Winner, MADA Award (Make A Difference Award) for Best Feature Documentary
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Mid-Atlantic Black Film Festival – Norfolk, Virginia – Finalist, Best Feature Documentary
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Nominated for a 2011 American Library Association Notable Video Award for Adults.
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Border. Line…Family Pictures
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New England Film & Video Festival Winner, Vision in Color Award (2000)
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QUAD Productions