The unsung story of Black queer presence in music told through the personal stories of contemporary and historic artists who have shaped the sounds and culture cherished today but rarely receive recognition or acknowledgment of their full identities.
Hiding In Plain Sight brings to life the stories of Black queer performers who have shaped our music and culture and influenced mainstream artists like David Bowie, Prince, the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Harry Styles. Moving between archival footage, interviews with artists and scholars, and verite footage of emerging Black queer artists navigating the industry today, and told against the backdrop of the social movements over the last two centuries, the feature documentary will show for perhaps the first time how Black queer artists were central to the development of nearly every genre of music, from gospel to rock, disco to pop, and house to hip-hop. Punctuating the film will be the electric performances and images of Black queer performers from the 1800s to the present.
The Filmmakers
Luchina Fisher is the Emmy Award-winning director and producer of THE DADS, about five fathers of trans kids bonding on a weekend fishing trip. The short documentary, executive produced by Dwyane Wade and acquired by Netflix, received the 2024 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Program and a Special Recognition Award from GLAAD. Her directorial debut, MAMA GLORIA, about a Black trans elder activist, was nominated for a 2022 GLAAD Media Award and broadcast on PBS. She is also the director of the award-winning short documentary TEAM DREAM, executive produced by Queen Latifah, and co-director of the award-winning feature documentary LOCKED OUT, about the barriers to Black homeownership. She is currently finishing a feature-length documentary with some of the dads from her Emmy-winning short and a project about the unsung history of Black queer presence in music, which won the 2023 PitchBLACK Film Forum. She is a visiting professor in film at Fairfield University and has taught documentary filmmaking at Yale. She is a member of the Television Academy and serves on the board of New York Women in Film and Television.
Yvonne Welbon is an award-winning filmmaker and founder and CEO of the Chicago-based non-profit Sisters in Cinema, inspired by her documentary of the same name, about the history of Black women feature film directors. She has produced over two dozen award-winning films, which have been broadcast on PBS, Starz/Encore, TV-ONE, IFC, Bravo, the Sundance Channel, BET, HBO, Netflix, and iTunes, and screened in over one hundred film festivals around the world. She has taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Bennett College. Raised in a Honduran household on the South Side of Chicago, Welbon holds a B.A. from Vassar College, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and is a graduate of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women. In 2020, she became a member of the Documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.