By Susan Berston–
When award-winning filmmaker Deborah Craig was making her short documentary A Great Ride (2018), about lesbians and aging, she received a tip from aikido sensei Penny Sablove about a woman in her 80s who lived in the woods in Northern California and still cut her own firewood with a chainsaw! The visual was compelling for Craig, and she had to see it for herself. “I wanted that on film,” she said. Little did she know at the time what a big adventure she was in for—documenting the life of brilliant lesbian feminist teacher and spokeswoman Sally Gearhart.
In the summer of 2014, Craig and her camerawoman Silvia Turchin charged down a dirt path in Willits, CA, 2-1/2 hours north of San Francisco, trying to keep up with Gearhart. The video footage she ended up with while careening around in a battered-up Isuzu Jeep with Gearhart and her dog Bodhi covered themes ranging from aging to feminism and separatism to gay rights and academia to environmentalism. According to Craig, who teaches at San Francisco State University as Gearhart once did, “Everybody who saw the footage was like, ‘Who is this? She’s so amazing. You’ve got to make a film about her … . You shouldn’t do a film about aging; you should just do a feature length film about Sally.’”
Craig and her Co-Directors/Co-Producers Jörg Fockele and Ondine Rarey took six years to complete Sally!, a documentary about lesbian feminist trailblazer and activist Sally Miller Gearhart (1931–2021). The film had its World Premiere at the Frameline 48 San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival in June of 2024. Sally! is currently on a global festival tour, and has won four audience awards, one jury award for best documentary, and a Best Director award.
Sally Gearhart’s Achievements
At San Francisco State University in the 1970s, Gearhart and a group of other feminists helped establish one of the nation’s first Women Studies programs. She rose to prominence when she campaigned alongside Harvey Milk in 1978 to defeat Proposition 6, the anti-gay (John) Briggs initiative, which would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from California public school classrooms.
She was a Renaissance woman with expansive interests. Besides teaching and activism, she also wrote the cult classic fantasy novel The Wanderground, about a utopian women’s community in the hills, and appeared in the classic film Word Is Out (1977), which normalized gay life.
Help Support Sally!
Sally! is screening on Wednesday, December 18, at 6:30 pm at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood theatre in Berkeley. While completed, the documentary still very much needs your generous tax-deductible contributions of any size, as the filmmakers forge ahead with festival submissions and an impact campaign to help schools and community-based organizations use the film to increase awareness and encourage activism. Learn more at our website
(https://www.sallygearhartfilm.com/) and contact us via email at
SallyGearhartFilm@gmail.com or call me at 415-596-4900.
Craig remarks: “I’ve been scrambling ever since to fully understand the brilliance, warmth, complexity, humor, theatrics, contradictions, engagement, connectedness, imagination, and 110% humanity of this truly one-of-a-kind human being. Thank you, Sally, for the privilege. Thank you, Sally, for the adventure.”
Susan Berston is a Co-Executive Producer of “Sally!”. She is also an Instructor in the School of Business at City College of San Francisco and is the author of several acclaimed business textbooks.
Arts & Entertainment
Published on December 5, 2024
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