Jonathan Lee
Storytellers
Chuck Wheeler
Meet some of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Queer films are more vital now than ever, and Chuck Wheeler knows that as coordinator of the OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival, one of the largest LGBTQ+ film festivals in the southeast. The festival attracts thousands of attendees yearly. While COVID presented a signifcant setback, Wheeler and his team have been wildly successful at rebuilding the event and helping it flourish.
The festival, which “celebrates a worldwide glimpse of today’s LGBTQ+ life,” according to its website, has been going on for 29 years in Durham, N.C., and Wheeler has been a part of it since the beginning back in 1996, when it was called the North Carolina Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
“The festival’s existence in 2024 was more important than ever, as it provided the LGBTQ+ community a chance to gather as one, especially in the face of growing political adversity and escalating violence against us, particularly towards transgender members of our community,” Wheeler says.
“I was 16 when Stonewall occurred, I lost most of my friends during the AIDS epidemic, I was violently struck in the face by a guy who called me a ‘f****t’ in 1982, I marched in Washington for our rights in 1993, I celebrated the legalization of gay marriage in North Carolina in 2014, I married my longtime partner two weeks later, and I heralded the long-overdue arrival of gay marriage throughout the U.S. in 2015,” he continues. “That is, I’ve witnessed and lived through the good and the bad. Now in 2024, however, I feel as if it is pre-Stonewall again, and I am deeply saddened and angry that having come so far, everything we have accomplished is again being challenged.” @outsouthqueerfilmfest
Mey Rude
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
Ron Amato
Mark Cortale
Meet some of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Ron Amato
Broadway has long been home to many great LGBTQ+ artists and businesspeople throughout the years, and producer Mark Cortale is proud to be a part of that legacy. The producer of the three-time Tony-nominated new musical Days of Wine and Roses by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel served as producing artistic director at the Art House in Provincetown before moving to Broadway last year, and he’s not slowing down.
In September, he produced Table 17 by Douglas Lyons off-Broadway, and coming up in April, he’s partnering with Lincoln Center to produce Tina Landau and Adam Guettel’s musical Floyd Collins. “The LGBTQ+ community is comprised of incredibly compassionate, intelligent, and talented people,” Cortale says. “We are your sons, your daughters, your brothers, and your sisters. Embrace us — we are here to stay.” @cortalemark