Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria
Co-Presented with the Roxie Theater as part of its 40 Years of Queer series!
Post screening discussion with filmmakers Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman
Wednesday March 19, 2025 | 6:30-8:00pm
At the Roxie Theater | 3125 16th Street SF, CA 94103
Tenderloin Museum is proud to co-present a filmmaker screening of Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria at the Roxie Theater, part of the Roxie’s 40 Years of Queer series and TLM’s 10th Anniversary programming.
Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman’s 2005 documentary is an essential piece of cinema that has indelibly shaped both Tenderloin and Transgender history. Since day one, Screaming Queens has been central to how the Tenderloin Museum tells of our neighborhood’s story. Now, as part of our 10th Anniversary programming, TLM is co-presenting a screening of this crucial piece of documentary in its entirety with longtime collaborators and friends at the Roxie Theater, which is in the midst of showcasing 40 Years of Queer cinema in a series co-curated by Lex Sloan and Jenni Olson.
Whether you’re seeing Screaming Queens for the first time or revisiting this watershed entry into LGBTQ history, this program is an epic opportunity to experience this documentary masterpiece on the big screen with the communities keeping the Compton’s riot legacy alive. TLM’s Executive Director Katie Conry will introduce the film, and both Stryker and Silverman will be present for a post-screening discussion! Purchase tickets directly from the Roxie’s website.
About Screaming Queens:
In the summer of 1966, a drag queen patron of the Tenderloin’s Compton’s Cafeteria threw her cup of hot coffee in the face of a police officer as he made an unwarranted attempt to arrest her. The riot that followed would come to be known as the United States’ first recorded act of militant queer resistance to social oppression and police harassment in history. Three years before the famous gay riot at New York’s Stonewall Inn, the neighborhood’s drag queens and allies banded together to fight back against their ongoing discrimination, beating the cops with their high heels and throwing furniture out of the cafeteria windows.