Open Dialogues: Stories From the LGBTQ Community

Outreach projects can open your institution to new audiences. Open Dialogues captures the diverse coming-out narratives of seven Broward County residents. This impactful community outreach project highlights how individuals learn to empower themselves in the face of outward marginalization. Join staff from the Art and Culture Center/Hollywood as they share how they created this project, discuss impact, and provide tips towards better community outreach.

Open Dialogues is designed as a collaborative program in which the Art and Culture Center partners with off-site entities to present film screenings with moderated talks. Open Dialogues screenings create a non-confrontational space that breaks down silos and inspires honest conversations about how fairness and equity are the foundation of a healthy community. From April 2021 to June 2022, the Center has presented 37 unique screenings and discussions of our two Open Dialogues films that engaged more than 1,200 attendees and 32 partnering entities.

Synopsis:  Open Dialogues: Stories From the LGBTQ Community captures the diverse coming-out narratives of seven Broward County residents who shared their stories in on-camera interviews. Produced by the Art and Culture Center/Hollywood, and directed, photographed and edited by Miami-based filmmaker Freddy Rodriguez, Stories From the LGBTQ Communityreveals in intimate detail how the LGBTQ community is often marginalized within families, schools, churches and public spaces – and how individuals featured in the film learned to empower themselves in these spaces. The online publication Queer Guru described Stories From the LGBTQ Community as “powerful,” adding that the film “is exactly what most queer people would have loved to been able to view on the verge of ‘coming out’ as gay.  Listening to the stories of seven South Florida members of the LGBTQ community articulate on their own journeys is such an uplifting experience.” The Broward residents who shared their coming-out experience are Dan Bassett, Franchesca D’Amore, Michael Goodman, Gary Keating, Omar Morales, Julie Marie Wade, and Christine Walters. Wade, a nationally renowned writer, reads select poems from her 2014 collection When I Was Straight.