Synopsis
Growing up poor, Chicano, a woman and a lesbian in mid 20th century East L.A., Nancy Valverde’s life was a constant uphill battle, complicated by the fact that she preferred the comfort of men’s clothes; a “misdemeanor crime” which she was routinely arrested for. Now at age 83, Nancy’s lifelong defiance and resilience to maintain her self identity as a butch lesbian, has garnered her legendary status in the Los Angeles LGBTQ community. Nancy From East Side Clover is part of an upcoming feature length documentary about the Gay history of the Los Angeles area entitled L.A. A Queer History.
Director’s Biography
Gregorio Davila is a writer and all around visual artist; much of his work revolves around people of color, mainly Latinos, who he believes are grossly under and misrepresented in media, especially Queer Latinos.
He has 3 feature-length screenplays and 1 pilot. The first, TWO SPIRIT is about the Native American tradition of recognizing a third gender; men or women who at puberty decided to live as the opposite sex, They were believed to embody the spirit of both a male and a female and were regarded as powerful spiritual beings and shamans.
His pilot, THE EAST SIDE, is about a group of gay men (half of which and the main character are Latino, and one female to male transgender) living in the Silverlake and Echo Park areas of Los Angeles. The gay mecca of West Hollywood has been well documented, but the more rough around the edges gay scene on the ‘east side’ has a thriving community of LGBTQ’s who feel marginalized by Weho’s predominately white scene, where the focus is on appearance and materialism as opposed to civil rights.
He is currently editing GAY LATINO L.A. part 2, which will be released this summer and for the past year and a half has been researching and editing his own documentary L.A.: A QUEER HISTORY. A film about the rich and widely unknown gay history of the Los Angeles area, showcasing eras from the Natives, to the queer cowboys during the Gold Rush, early Hollywood, the birth of the gay civil rights movement and beyond, up to Prop 8.
