CALIFORNIA Gay weddings inspire documentaries

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Not just any couple gets an Academy Award-winning director to shoot their wedding video. Then again, the Feb. 12 ceremony uniting the first ladies of the gay-rights movement, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, wasn't just any wedding.
Lyon, 79, and Martin, 83, partners in love and lesbian politics for more than half a century, agreed to be the first pair to tie the knot with San Francisco's blessing after Mayor Gavin Newsom decided to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Fear that a court might intervene before the "I Do's" were said demanded a rushed, hush-hush affair.
But amid the last-minute preparations, the mayor's policy director, Joyce Newstat, had the presence of mind to invite her friend, documentary filmmaker Debra Chasnoff, to be among the handful of city hall insiders to witness the historic, closed-door nuptials. The result is "One Wedding and a Revolution," Chasnoff's behind-the-scenes look at the events leading up to the city's short-lived experiment in marriage equality.
'A marker in history'
"There was no pre-production on this project. No lighting crew, no sound crew," said Chasnoff, who won an Oscar in 1991 for a documentary on General Electric's ties to nuclear power. "To me, it was this snapshot of what a tremendous revolution we have been going through. I think it will always be a marker in history."
As it turned out, other filmmakers, some amateurs and some professionals, had the same thought. Chasnoff's spare, 20-minute record of the Martin-Lyon wedding is one of nine films inspired by the monthlong march to matrimony at city hall making their debut this weekend at the 28th San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.