Entertainment

Crying 'Wolfe!' 25 years of queer video

By Matt Kailey

Wolfe Video founder Kathy Wolfe

When Wolfe Video printed its first catalog in 1985 and convinced gay and lesbian book stores to create a video section for its films, the company may not have anticipated how much things would change over the next 25 years - and how much things would stay the same.

"Our goal 25 years ago remains the same today," says Wolfe Video president Maria Lynn, "which is to put positive images of gays and lesbians out into the media, and then have those be as widely available as possible. And we chose to do that through film."

Lynn and company founder Kathy Wolfe have been partners - business, not romantic - for 17 years, since Wolfe lured her friend away from the computer industry and into the film distribution business.

"Kathy and I met about 25 years ago," says Lynn. "I was living in the neighborhood, and she had just found this program. It was really just before Wolfe Video was getting started. And she said, 'I have this idea to do this gay and lesbian video thing.' And we were like, 'Oh, that's interesting.' This was really before anybody really even had VCRs, so none of us had any idea how this was going to work."

But the lack of VCRs didn't stop Wolfe's vision - and neither did early misunderstandings about what gay and lesbian film was all about.

"In the early days, when we were first taking products into the mainstream, we were explaining to retailers that we were not selling porn - that these were actually feature films, slice-of-life films and documentaries," says Lynn.

Another misunderstanding that Wolfe Video has encountered involves the audience for its films - especially since two women own the company.

"There is a wide misperception that Wolfe is only a lesbian company - that we only do lesbian work," says Lynn. "And that may be because we're women. But we have, of course, a large men's library. At least half of our library is gay as opposed to lesbian."

In fact, one of Wolfe's most popular titles is the award-winning gay romance Big Eden, which introduced writer/director Thomas Bezucha, who went on to create the mainstream movie hit The Family Stone. Other popular Wolfe titles include Lily Tomlin's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe - Tomlin was one of Wolfe Videos' first clients - Brother to Brother, Annabelle, Desert Hearts, and, more recently, Were the World Mine.

"One of the things that has contributed to the success of these films are gay and lesbian film festivals," says Lynn. "This is one place that, while festivals in this economy are having a hard time getting sponsorships, they're still packing the houses with people coming to the movies. And it's awesome that it's the first place people hear about a gay movie and it adds tremendous word of mouth, and so when something is successful at a film festival, like Big Eden or Were the World Mine, people talk about it. And when it comes out on DVD, there's already a buzz for it. So we see the most successful films as having their start on the film circuit."

And it's not just LGBT-specific film festivals that create the buzz anymore. Wolfe recently acquired Undertow, the story of two Peruvian men in a forbidden relationship, which won the World Cinema Audience Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

In fact, LGBT film itself is changing, according to Lynn - more films are being made, thanks to digital technology, and more films are being made available, thanks to video-on-demand channels, iTunes, Netflix and other outlets.

"When Claire of the Moon came out, for example ... women would drive all the way up to San Francisco to watch a lesbian movie in the theater," she says. "That would never happen now. ... And people don't buy as many movies as they used to. They rent them. ... And I should mention piracy, because, of course, there are a number of places you can download movies for free that have them illegally. And consumers need to know that when they do that, they're actually hurting the filmmakers and hurting the filmmaking business. ... The filmmakers never make any money off that. ... If we want to see more movies being made, we need to support them through legal sources."

Along with the changes in filmmaking and film watching, there has been a shift toward mainstream acceptance of LGBT film, and Lynn hopes that to continue as all viewers - LGBT and straight - make their preferences known.

"I encourage people to go to places like Netflix and add gay movies to their queue," she says. "You can find all of the Wolfe movies on Netflix, and it's an easy way to get movies. And also WolfeVideo.com is the best place to buy movies. ... We're constantly saying, 'Don't just be gay. Buy gay.' ... We're a gay-owned company. We encourage people to shop from us directly."

This sea change in support of gay and lesbian films was particularly visible at this year's Olympics.

"Newsweek mentioned the Pride House in Vancouver. ... There's actually a Pride House in the Olympic Village," says Lynn. "And two of our movies [played] there - Training Rules and The Butch Factor, which both deal with sports. That's completely groundbreaking - to have gay films showing at the Olympics. We've done so much work and had so many films released over the years and had them more and more widely released that I definitely think that we've not only achieved our goal, but it continues to get further every day."

In fact, Wolfe Video has done so well that, for their 25th anniversary, they are giving away $1,000 worth of lesbian movies and $1,000 worth of gay movies every month for the rest of 2010. So go to their Web site at www.wolfevideo.com to sign up to win. This is just one more example of how Wolfe Video is making positive images of gay men and lesbians as widely available as possible. Their original goal continues.