It’s been nearly a year since North Texas filmmaker Robert L. Camina first screened his documentary feature Raid of the Rainbow Lounge for Texas audiences. The 103-minute documentary, narrated by out TV star Meredith Baxter, chronicles the raid by TABC and Fort Worth police on the newly opened gay club, which happened to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the raid of the Stonewall Inn, which sparked the modern gay-rights movement.
Along the way, the film has been back a few times to Dallas and Fort Worth, as well as 20 film festivals (some gay, some mainstream), winning awards in the process: Audience Choice awards in Fort Worth, Cincinnati and Indianapolis; Best GLBT Film from the Breckenridge Festival of Film, the Platinum Reel Award from the Nevada International Film Festival and a host of others. In addition, it has been shown at special screenings for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the North District of Texas and at the request of the U.S. State Department.
Now, it’s latest local screening — and who knows, perhaps final — will be at UNT on the Square in Denton. Camina will be in attendance at the screening, which will take place Saturday, Feb. 9 at 4 p.m. on the campus of the university. You can get tickets at the festival’s website. ThinLineFilmFest.com.
Dallas filmmaker Robert L. Camina’s documentary, Raid of the Rainbow Lounge, has snagged yet another festival award, this time Audience Choice Award for Feature Documentary at the CNKY Scene Film Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. Members of the Cincinnati police department and city council, including a recently elected out councilman, were in attendance with Camina and the film’s narrator, Meredith Baxter. This is the fourth award for the documentary about the Fort Worth/TABC raid on a Cowtown gay bar in 2009, which sparked a national debate on gay rights. It’s set to screen at about a half-dozen more festivals (gay and mainstream) before the end of the year.
Raid of the Rainbow Lounge, the documentary about the event that triggered a renewed passion for gay rights in North Texas, has won two recent awards. Earlier this month, it took the Audience Choice Award at Fort Worth’s Q Cinema; then a week later, it took Best GLBT FIlm at the 32nd Breckenridge Festival of Film in Colorado. The latter, mind you, is not a gay film fest at all, but a mainstream one with a gay category.
“I made the decision right away to make a short film about the raid,” director Robert Camina says.
