For its annual celebration of Black History Month, Hamptons Doc Fest and the Southampton Arts Center are co-presenting the film “I Was Born This Way” on Saturday, February 28, at 4 PM at SAC.
The film, directed by Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard, which had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, explores the life, career, and legacy of Carl Bean, a disco singer who became an archbishop and a pioneer in the LGBTQ civil rights movement.
One of his most famous songs was “I Was Born This Way” in 1977, which Questlove says was “a song ahead of its time… This one song started a revolution.”
Bean, who died in 2021 at the age of 77, is interviewed extensively in the film, speaking candidly about his troubled childhood growing up in Baltimore, his suicide attempt, and his mother’s death from an abortion. “He was at his happiest when he was singing,” said his sister.
After moving to New York City, Bean became a gospel singer with Harlem’s Christian Tabernacle Choir, then moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, switched to R&B, and formed a band called Carl Bean and Universal Love. In the late 1970s, he launched a solo career with Motown Records during the disco craze.
Bean became a full-time LGBTQ activist, founding the Minority AIDS Project in 1985 to help people of color. He also founded his own gay-friendly ministry — the Unity Fellowship Church — and became an archbishop.
Some of those interviewed in the film, besides Questlove, are Billy Porter, Dionne Warwick, and Lady Gaga, who says her 2011 hit song “Born This Way” was directly influenced by his gay anthem.
After the screening, the event features a live interview with director Sam Pollard, the Peabody Award-winning, multi-Emmy Award-winning, and Oscar-nominated documentary director and producer. Hamptons Doc Fest has also presented several of his earlier films — such as the PBS American Masters works “August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand” and “Sammy Davis, Jr., I’ve Gotta Be Me,” and also “MLK/FBI” and “Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes.” Pollard was also honored with the HDF Pennebaker Career Achievement Award in December 2022.
Tickets are $15, or $10 for members of SAC, are available at the door or online at southamptonartscenter.org