Summaries

Synopsis

Sappho's Fire offers understanding about the journey that all of us travel and the ways a person may reclaim one's final years. Directors Alexia Kosmider and Deborah Monuteaux aim their lens at an''endangered' segment of the New England landscape, older lesbians, to explore what aging signifies to this group of women and to discover the philosophies and strategies that elderly lesbians have developed in facing the end of one's journey. Sappho's Fire weaves a mystical song 'Windsong' (produced by Marianne Messina) and African drums with an ethereal dance sequence that conjures up the legacy of the Greek poet, Sappho, to create an atmosphere conducive to receiving modern day lesbian stories. Sappho's Fire focuses on older lesbians who confront growing older as each one must face health care issues, and where she will ultimately live, and with whom she wants to be with in her latter years. Connie, and Janet, who want to move, from their home to a retirement home search for an affordable and gay-friendly community. Suzanne, 69, must deal with her family's minimal acceptance of her coming out in later fife; family members still refuse to embrace her sexual identity. Adria, 62, a Jewish lesbian, finds expression in her recent devotion to Yoga and Buddhism while she struggles with the recent death of her parent. Antoinette, of El Salvadoran decent, recounts her experience as an activist and her connection to art and writing as she faces older life. Ann Kennedy, 77, a semi-retired college professor who lives in the heart of Boston, came out of the closet at the age of 70; she attends Bostons LGBTQ functions seeking her life-partner. Laura, originally from Italy, moved in with her partner of ten years, Laura, , and they plan a fall wedding. The camera chronicles their lives as we travel to New Jersey to seek out Suzanne's only relative who will talk to us on camera about her aunts lesbianism. And we follow Connie and Janet as they visit an exclusive retirement community in Massachusetts and witness their despair as this is not the place that they can afford to retire to, nor desire to settle in this very straight-oriented community. We listen to adult children tell their stories of their mother coming out as a lesbian, plummeting their family into a whirlwind of changes, ultimately forcing their mother to abandon them. The audience attends a yoga cession and listens to Adria discuss life and death, from a new perspective, her fathers recent death. In following their stories, we come to understand the deep-seated and often impenetrable fears of growing older without the certainties of family support or sufficient economic investment to obtain an appropriate retirement. ''Their stories are precious and no one listens to older lesbians' life experiences. I think that these stories demonstrate to younger members of the LGBTQ community and larger mainstream culture, what silence and denial of one's identity is like, and the repercussion of an individual's decision not to be gay or a lesbian' says Kosmider. The documentary discovers that older lesbians often married to fit into mainstream society. Younger lesbians, however, often identified with radical feminists such as Mary Daly, who taught at Boston College. Daly's writings and other early feminist writers enabled these younger lesbians, who were born in the 1950s, to become more fully conscious of their identities as women and lesbians. Sappho's Fire unravels the complexity of calling oneself 'old' and the discovery that older lesbians have contested, and even defied, this judgment of being labeled old.