QSeries: LGBTQ Lives on Film

Director Wu Tsang captures the happy party scene inside the Silver Platter, an LGBTQ bar in Los Angeles, in his documentary Wildness. He also captures an ever-present sense of danger menacingly waiting, it seems, right outside its doors. The usual clientele of the Silver Platter, one of the oldest gay bars in L.A., is LGBTQ Hispanic immigrants. Several years ago, Tsang began a weekly performance art/dance/music party called Wildness. At first the Silver Platter’s regular crowd resented the young hipsters the party drew, but eventually there was a commingling of white performance artists, Latino drag queens and other outsiders in search of a safe space. It’s that idea of a safe space, how different communities create and protect it, that’s at the core of Wildness, screening here as part of the QSeries: LGBTQ Lives on Film program. Dr. Andy Campbell, CORE Program critic in residence at the Glassell School of Art/Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, leads a discussion after the screening.

6 p.m. reception; 6:30 p.m. screening. Rice University, 6100 Main. For information, call 713-348-4853 or visit rice.edu. Free.

Tue., Feb. 3, 6 p.m., 2015