The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies
Director of Photography
It was an amazing journey visually capturing the stories, the art and inspiration of these fabulously crazy and creative gender bending artists. Interviews, art and b-roll were shot over a six year period with producer/director Jean Donohue. We traveled through out Lexington, Louisville even to Los Angles and Santa Barbara to tell the story.
This feature length documentary won Best Feature Film in the 2014 Sydney Transgendered International Film Festival amid over 200 entries. Nominated for Best Documentary Feature in the International Filmmakers Festival of World Cinema in NICE -France 2017. Winner River's Edge International Film Festival 2017
Synopsis:
The story of an underground gay, gender bending community rooted in the Civil War and on a continuum through the closeted Old South homosexual society, gay liberation of the 1960s, the ecstatic 70s, to the grip of fear at the rise of the religious right and HIV AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
In 1970, the Old World Southern gay culture was changing, enter The Pagan Babies, a loose group of artists and drag queens who set out to challenge the hierarchical homosexual society with guerrilla theater interventions and fantastic costumes.
Before Robert Mapplethorpe's infamous photos, there was R. Michael Walker and John Ashley who documented the Pagan Babies.