In What We Carry Forward, a queer filmmaker sets out to trace the legacy of the lesbian and gay documentarians who reshaped media from the margins in the 1970s and early 1980s. What begins as a historical inquiry—into the feminist film collectives, underground screenings, and activist-driven productions that defined a generation—soon becomes a more personal reckoning. As institutional support for politically engaged storytelling dries up and anti-queer sentiment resurfaces across the United States, the filmmaker begins to question their own place in an industry increasingly shaped by algorithms, market demands, and vanishing community infrastructure.

Told through archival footage, contemporary interviews, and reflective voiceover, the film draws parallels between past and present, asking: what can today’s queer filmmakers learn from those who came before? And how do we continue the work—not just of representation, but of building structures that allow us to tell stories on our own terms?

Featuring conversations with filmmakers like Frances Reid, Jan Oxenberg, and Rob Epstein, What We Carry Forward explores what it means to document a community while living inside of it, and what’s at stake when we lose the structures that once made that possible.