"The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies" Film Screening

Sweet Evening Breeze and Sue Mundy. Henry Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Rock Hudson. Bob Morgan and Bradley Picklesimer. These are some of the colorful characters who shape The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies, a documentary excavating a 150 year old, gender-bending, sexual outlaw community in the American south of Lexington, Kentucky.

This Kentucky lineage of gay pioneers and rebels grew strong underground. They documented their identity and history as a community through shared storytelling, troves of personal photographs, home movies, and early video. The archives include cross-dressing guerilla soldier Sue Mundy, who fought in the Civil War. Sweet Evening Breeze, the notorious transgender, black drag queen was born in the 1880s and nurtured a community in Lexington until 1987. Artists Henry Faulkner and Bob Morgan worked with, and partied with Tennessee Williams. Hollywood movie star Rock Hudson would come through town as the owner of its only gay bar.

Starting in the 1960s, a collective of artists and drag queens, who called themselves The Pagan Babies, banded together in Lexington to open up and change this pocket of secretive and genteel southern gay society. Through exuberant performances, art, photography, design and music, they created a social and cultural history of an era in transition – from the sexually liberated 1970s to the AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s. Artists Bradley Picklesimer and Bob Morgan trace how the community connected their own defiantly open gay lives with those of their elders across history. Rich with shared storytelling traditions, explosive creativity, and the courage to face both the humor and sorrow of their legacy, ‘The Last Gospel of the Pagan Babies” weaves together a story of an enduring and fearless gay culture in a place where it was least expected, and most surprising.

This screening takes place in conjunction with the Lexington Public Library Henry Faulkner Week, Feb. 25-March 3, and will feature an introduction by Faulkner Morgan Archive co-founder Bob Morgan and a panel discussion afterwards with Bob and activist Peter Taylor.