WETA Celebrates LGBTQ+ Pride Month

When Alison Bechdel received a coveted MacArthur Award for her best-selling graphic memoir Fun Home, it heralded the acceptance of LGBTQ+ comics in American culture. From DIY underground comix scene to mainstream acceptance, meet five smart and funny queer comics artists whose uncensored commentary left no topic untouched and explored art as a tool for social change.

Explore the definitive story of international art sensation Keith Haring who blazed a trail through the art scene of ‘80s New York and revolutionized the worlds of pop culture and fine art. The film features previously unheard interviews with Haring.

In the 1950s and ’60s, an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge at a house in the Catskills region of New York. Known as Casa Susanna, the house provided a safe place to express their true selves.

Follow queer actor Dyllón Burnside on a journey to discover how LGBTQ Americans are finding ways to live authentically and with pride in the modern South.

Who decides which stories get told? A scrappy group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists buck the white male-dominated status quo, banding together to launch The 19th*, a digital news startup aiming to combat misinformation. A story of an America in flux, and the voices often left out of the narrative, the documentary Breaking the News shows change doesn’t come easy.

They call one another “mama bears” because of the ferocity with which they fight for their children’s rights. Although they grew up as fundamentalist, evangelical Christians praying for the souls of LGBTQ+ people, these mothers are now willing to risk losing friends, family, and faith communities to champion their kids—even if it challenges their belief systems and rips apart their worlds.

Billie Jean King and seven icons on the past, present, and future of women’s sports.
CORRECTION (Dec. 8, 2023): This program mistakenly refers to two events of the women’s heptathlon as the 60-meter and 1,000-meter run. The program should have referred instead to the 200-meter dash and 800-meter run in which Jackie Joyner-Kersee participated as part of the women’s heptathlon.

Experience the meteoric rise and enduring legacy of Little Richard. This portrait of the “King and Queen of Rock and Roll” explores his far-reaching influence as well as his advocacy for the rights of Black artists in the music industry.

Disco seemed untouchable by the end of the 1970s, but an incited violent backlash led to its demise. Dive into disco's underground return, where it laid the foundations for all future electronic dance music.

Experience the pinnacle of disco culture during the 1970s, set against the backdrop of Black power and sexual liberation. As disco conquers the mainstream, Black women and gay men rise as superstars and icons.

Explore the origin of a global music phenomenon born among gay and Black communities coming together in apartments and basement bars in 1970s New York, where dancefloors became a platform in their battle for visibility and inclusion.

In 1975, Billie Jean King and Arthur Ashe are fighting to become Wimbledon champions — and away from the court they are also battling for social change on a global level.

In 1986, to awaken America to the AIDS crisis and to honor the friends he lost, actor/playwright Brent Nicholson Earle runs the perimeter of the United States. In The American Run for the End of AIDS, Brent runs a marathon a day for 20 months, with his mother and a Winnebago driving behind him. In 2020, he stars in a play about his life. Though the run finishes, Brent’s fight never stops.

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. That night the street erupted into violent protests and street demonstrations that lasted for the next three days. The Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world.

Take an intimate look into the life of Liza Minnelli, best known for her Oscar-winning role in Cabaret. Following in the footsteps of her mother Judy Garland, Minnelli used her boundless raw talent to build her own legacy in showbiz.