The film documents Art and Pep’s arrival to Chicago from small-town Illinois and Cuba respectively. The two discovered bar culture, and how precious it could be to those marginalized communities who craved a safe haven all their own. When the pair fell fast in love, an opportunity arose that took their lives in an altogether new and exciting trajectory: opening their own bar would allow Art and Pepe to continue celebrating the freedoms they found in Boystown as well as make a positive impact on their community. We witness their roles in gay public life from the post-Stonewall 1970s, through the emergent political activism of ActUp in the 1980s during the plague years of AIDS and HIV, landmark Chicago Gay rights legislation, the legalization of gay marriage, and finally the COVID years. The audience receives these stories through personal interviews with Art and Pep, as well as friends, employees, reporters, and past and present public figures. The film uses much historical media coverage as well as home-movies and videotape. Animation with personal oral-history voice-over add to the narrative style. Art and Pep demonstrates that victories in Gay Rights were not isolated to the progressive East and West Coast cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and that dedicated activism and effort can produce positive change in the Midwest.
One thing Art and Pep does most effectively is recontextualize a conventional view of bars simply as venues for drunken partying, casting Sidetrack as a window into a desperately-needed freedom, its bartenders ambassadors of love and acceptance. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows you’re gay. It documents the central role of gay bars in the history and community building of LGBTQ+ people and the groundbreaking inclusivity that Sidetrack has demonstrated since its opening in 1982. Art and Pep takes you through the duo’s storied history, from the pandemics they survived, to the laws that they passed, to the people they brought joy, and it purposely never stops long enough in any one moment in time to dwell. Like the couple’s bar itself, the film is not content to simply make space for itself in a straight world, but is determined to take up that space with joy and love. It’s not just about being here and queer, but being here, queer, and celebrating. Art and Pep aims to capture that celebration and does, and in that, is the best tribute it can be to its subject. (5/10)
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