Last Call at Maud's

Interesting, but incomplete...wish it had been longer & more detailed
The film deals with the last day Maud's is open after being in business for 23 years. I enjoyed seeing the various patrons reminisce about their younger days at Maud's, but I wish more detail could have gone into the history behind lesbian bars, their huge impact during the repressive 1940s and 1950s, and how brave these women were to defy authority and risk arrest by patronizing these places. I would have liked this documentary to be longer, with the regulars going into more detail about how the bars affected their lives, problems they encountered, etc. It seemed people were sad but accepting about Maud's closing, indicating that social changes dictated its eventual demise.

Important Lesbian Herstory
I was totally disturbed when I saw the lesbian club scene in the film "Black Dahlia." There, a lesbian club is shown as huge with many lights and everyone having a good time. Every gay studies text said that being in a gay or lesbian club in the mid-20th century could have gotten you arrested, fired, and worse. Clubs were often holes in the wall because they didn't want to be noticed by others or were run by the mafia. Lesbian bar frequenters at that time were brave women taking risks. This documentary points to the realities of a lesbian club over the decades.

One interviewee said that at one time, there was only one lesbian bar in SF compared to 139 places for gay men. Many films now have lesboeroticism in that, but the number of lesbian documentaries is still small. This was a needed and appreciated intervention.

Many a documentary on gay men never mentions lesbians, but this work on lesbians did mention gay men. The work says that as gay men were...

Great Lesbian Documentary
Great movie! Wonderful historical look at an old time Lesbian bar in San Francisco. Lots of different Lesbian voices tell a preStonewall story.

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