The Friends of The Ross, The Norman A. Geske Cinema Showcase, and the UNL LGBTQA+ Center present filmmaker John Scagliotti, who will be at the Ross on Friday, October 22 for a Q+A with the audience following a screening of his documentary Before Homosexuals.

John Scagliotti also directed the companion documentaries Before Stonewall and After Stonewall. Activist and professor Louis Crompton (1925-2009) who developed one of the nation’s first gay studies classes at UNL in 1970, is featured in Before Homosexuals. Click here to read more about Louis Compton.

This event is presented in conjunction with the annual LGBTQA+ History Month Dinner. 

Following the screening and Q+A, The Nebraska Alumni Association and the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Gender and Sexual Identities are hosting a reception in the Van Brunt Visitor’s Center, located next to the Ross. The Nebraska Alumni Association is providing hors d’ouvres and a cash bar will be available to those 21+. Visit go.unl.edu/beforehomosexualsreception to pre-register to attend the reception. Registration deadline is Friday, October 15.

JOHN SCAGLIOTTI

In his over 40 years of LGBT media experience, John Scagliotti has produced a number of now classic documentaries, such as BEFORE STONEWALL, AFTER STONEWALL, and DANGEROUS LIVING. In addition to filmmaking, Scagliotti created the first LGBT radio show in 1973 (THE LAVENDER HOUR) and the first ever gay and lesbian television series on PBS called IN THE LIFE. In 2010 Scagliotti began the first ever LGBT film festival cruise program called PRIDE OF THE OCEAN. Recently he received an honorary doctorate from Marlboro College in recognition of his service to the LGBT and allied community.

BEFORE HOMOSEXUALS

Before Homosexuals takes the viewer on a wondrous tour of same-sex desire from ancient times to Victorian crimes. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker John Scagliotti guides us in this expedition of erotic history, poetry and visual art in this point-of-view documentary. He explores how the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the growth of LGBT political power in the 1990s cleared the path for artists and scholars to re-discover pre-20th century same-sex desires. Weaving dozens of expert interviews with art and poetry, he revels in lesbian love spells from ancient Rome, homoerotic verses of Michelangelo, censored chapters of the Kamasutra, Native American two-spirit rituals and more. A prequel to the 1986 PBS national broadcast of Before Stonewall, Before Homosexuals unearths the garden of human sexual delights and the endurance and creativity of “an army of lovers”.