lesbian

This documentary pays homage to the trailblazers who founded and produced the influential lesbian magazine Curve, formerly Deneuve, starting in the early 1990s. The archival footage — big hair, Melissa Etheridge, joyous dyke marches, the media fixation on “lesbian chic” — is certainly entertaining. But any nostalgia is tempered by reminders that the ‘90s was also the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; the so-called Defense of Marriage Act; and several high profile anti-lesbian hate crimes.

Ahead of the Curve, from co-directors Jen Rainin and Rivkah Beth Medow, is a smart and impressively comprehensive documentary covering the establishment and history of Curve Magazine (formerly known by the title Deneuve) and showing the Lesbian publication’s enormous impact on LGBTQ+ culture and lifestyle. In addition to profiling Curve‘s dynamic and charismatic founder, Frances “Franco” Stevens, the film chronicles the Lesbian movement from the 1990s to the present, as it struggled — and continues to struggle — against persecution, discrimination and misunderstanding by making the Lesbian community, lifestyle and accomplishments highly visible.

One of the better things that the briskly edited documentary Ahead of the Curve accomplishes is the way it charts how queer culture — and varied lesbian lifestyles in particular – have grown in acceptance since the ‘90s. Part of that change in attitudes in our society can be attributed to a gutsy woman named Franco Stevens.