Viola Davis Gloves up for ‘The Fighting Shirley Chisholm’

Sometimes non-queer people earn the right to call themselves more than allies; they get to be honorary members of the LGBTQ community. If anyone deserves that it’s the late Shirley Chisholm. She was the first African-American woman elected to Congress in the House of Representatives in 1968. And she was “intersectional” before the internet decided on a concise word for caring about the rights and dignity of all people. She stood up for poor and working class people, she was for LGBTQ rights when it was politically poisonous to take that stand, and she generally gave a damn when others didn’t.

Now Academy Award winner Viola Davis will portray her for Amazon Studios feature, The Fighting Shirley Chisholm, written by Adam Countee (Silicon Valley) and directed by Maggie Betts (Novitiate). Davis is a perfect choice. She’s the one you call when you want it knocked out of the park, and she’ll return Chisholm to the public consciousness, letting a new generation know why the words “Unbought and Unbossed” are engraved on her headstone. Look for this one sometime in 2019.

Trans filmmaker Rhys Ernst hits Sundance with Adam

Transgender filmmaker Rhys Ernst, whose TV miniseries documentary This Is Me led to directing an episode of Transparent, has stepped into features, helming his first full-length, Adam. Taking its initial bow at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in January, and based on the novel by queer cartoonist and author Ariel Schrag, Adam is the story of a teenage boy who spends his last summer of high school with his older sister in New York City among her lesbian and trans activist circle of friends. What he encounters there challenges his ideas, identity and integrity.

The film stars Nicholas Alexander (Good Girls), Margaret Qualley (The Leftovers) and legendary Pose house mother MJ Rodriguez, which is also great news. More trans filmmakers at Sundance, please, and more Pose ladies in everything, please. And by everything we mean Elektra Abundance working with Scorsese and Soderbergh, thank you. See you at Sundance.

Romeo San Vicente loves the Pose ladies and Viola Davis

source https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/12/25/viola-davis-gloves-up-for-the-fighting-shirley-chisholm/