NEA Gay & Lesbian Film Festivals 1993
- Artist/Author/Producer: National Alliance for Media Arts Culture
- Confronting Bodies: National Endowment for the Arts
- Dates of action: 8/25/93
- Location: Washington, DC
- Description of the Art Work
- Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals
- Description of incident
- A decision on August 25, 1993 to reverse a Bush administration ruling and
approve grants for three homosexual film festivals showed renewed
strength by the NEA. The decision headed off a threatened lawsuit by the
Oakland, California-based, National Alliance for Media Arts Culture, an
umbrella organization that had requested the original funding on behalf
of the Gay and Lesbian Media Coalition in Los Angeles, the New Festival
in New York, and the Pittsburgh International Lesbian and Gay Film
Festival.
The NEA said it would give the alliance the $17,500 the film festivals
would have received in 1992. The grants were rejected in November by
then-acting Chair Anne-Imelda Radice, who was appointed by President Bush
after he fired her predecessor, John Frohnmayer. Arts organizations said
that many of the films shown in the festivals were also shown at
mainstream film festivals. They charged that rejection of the grants was
based purely on politics, not artistic merit.
- Results of incident
- The NEA said it reversed its decision after acting Senior Deputy Chair
Ana Stelle found an "abuse of process" in Radice's rejection of the
grants. Radice made the decision after the deadline for notifying grant
applicants had passed and the festivals had already occurred.
Source:Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association