Entertaining at home.

After years of struggle, First Run Features thrives with gay and lesbian home video

"If I were making a snort film, I would hope that I was making a gay and lesbian film because there's a very strong audience for them," says Kelly Hargraves, publicity director for First Run Features, Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, the New York City-based film distributor is home to lots of queer short-film anthologies as well as gay-themed feature films, such as Paul Oremland's Like It Is, Ramin Naimi's Somewhere in the City, and Rose Troche's Bedrooms and Hallways.

"Our mandate from the beginning was to distribute underrepresented film," says Hatgraves. "in the process of doing that over 20 years, it turns out that the gay and lesbian part of our collection is the most vibrant."

First Run Features began as a distribution cooperative organized by a group of independent filmmakers. In 1983, with financial problems looming, Seymour Wishman came on board as president. A former civil rights lawyer who had been involved in gay rights litigation, Wishman presided over the company's rejuvenation, notably its entry into home video in 1989, Now First Run distributes more than 200 films, of which nearly 25% are gay or lesbian. Top sellers include Midnight Dancers, Parting Glances, Boyfriends, Boys in Love, and Peach, a short film from New Zealand featuring then-unknown Xena star Lucy Lawless as a sexy tow-truck driver who falls for a Maori woman, First Run releases most of its films theatrically prior to video and is expert at handling specialized titles. A case in point is Cheryl Dunye's The Water. melon Woman, First Run brought the African-American lesbian comedy to more than 100 cities.

Company vice president Marc Mauceri says the general outlook for gay and lesbian video has improved in recent years, although there are still problems with the larder chains. Blockbuster, for example, told First Run that they definitely wanted to carry the British film Boyfriends--but not with the video's cover art, which featured three bare-chested men, two of them kissing. First Run created a slightly different design, and the chain bought the film. More recently, however, Blockbuster added the potentially prohibitive requirement that all films come with an MPAA rating,

"While chains can represent a lot of money to any distributor," Mauceri adds, "a lot of our films go directly to consumers through our Web site or catalog; other catalogs, like TLA or Wolfe; or online sites, We also go out of our way to sell our films into the nonchain and non-general-store kinds of places. I consider them our more primary customers than a big chain like Blockbuster."

No matter how First Run connects with audiences, gay and lesbian films will remain a valued part of the mix. "We have a reputation of having serious quality films," Wishman says, "And [gay and lesbian films] have become, at least for us, a very important market."

Garcia writes on arts for publications including USA Today. He performs stand, up comedy under the name Gay Boy Ric.