From secret crushes to self-acceptance – a joyful chronicle of ‘old lesbian’ stories

Since creating the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project in 1998, Arden Eversmeyer has travelled across the US to collect more than 800 stories of lesbian women over the age of 70, as told in their own words. She considers the project an endeavour to gather these stories before they’re lost to time, as well as to help destigmatise and reclaim the words ‘old’ and ‘lesbian’. This short documentary from the US filmmaker Meghan McDonough explores Eversmeyer’s decades-spanning work chronicling the experiences of these women, and pairs intertwining fragments of their stories with lively animations.

From women who hid their true selves during unhappy marriages to men, to women who quietly carried on long-term, same-sex partnerships to avoid the consequences of being open, to one woman whose first crush was on the Statue of Liberty, each story contains its own distinct contours. However, they often overlap in some notable ways, including the interviewees’ understanding that there was something different about them early in life; the difficult experience of coming of age before being gay was widely accepted in the US; and the joy of finally becoming comfortable with their identity.