Tede Matthews Videotape Digitization Project

CONSERVATION & CAPTURE

Grant year: 2025

Grant category: Al Larvick National Grant

Grant recipient: GLBT Historical Society

Collection title: Tede Matthews Videotape Digitization Project

Primary maker(s):  Tede Matthews

Original format: VHS videotape

Circa: 1987-1993

Collection size: A total of 12 VHS videotapes, in addition to writings and ephemeral materials

Grant support: Cleaning, restoration and digital capture of half of videotape collection

Digital capture format: Archival, mezzanine and access level files

Lab: The MediaPreserve

Status:  Conservation and digitization to be completed

Online Access: Coming soon

Creative Commons License: Coming Soon

GRANTEE

The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society is a community-based archive and museum in San Francisco. The Society was founded in 1985 by community activists, historians, and fellow travelers dedicated to preserving and sharing LGBTQ history.

Today, our professional staff of archivists, museum workers, and non-profit administrators remain committed to this mission. Our archival collections document the history of the queer community in Northern California and beyond, chronicling more than a century of LGBTQ history. You can learn more about our organization, search collections, browse online resources, and more on our website at www.glbthistory.org.

FILMMAKER

Tede Matthews (July 29, 1951-July 17, 1993) was a San Francisco-based performer, poet, writer, draft dodger, longtime member of the Modern Times bookstore collective, key figure on the left flank of LGBTQ activism, and fixture of the San Francisco Mission District’s bilingual literary scene.

Matthews started Modern Times’ monthly open reading for LGBTQ writers and created the store’s Spanish-language section. He also hosted Mainstream Exiles, a salon for poets and musicians at the Valencia Rose, and performed with the radical theater group Angels of Light. Matthews, a pioneer of “genderfuck” whose gender presentation evolved over the course of his life, is also thought to have originated the aphorism, “We’re all born naked and anything anyone wears…is drag.”

An activist committed to LGBTQ freedom and solidarity with Central American liberation movements, Matthews helped found Bay Area Gay Liberation in the 1975 and Lesbians and Gays Against Intervention in the 1983,  and worked with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission’s Latin American programs in the 1990s. He died of complications related to AIDS in July 1993. 

collection

The Tede Matthews collection consists of nine cartons of personal writings and poetry, works of art, publications, photographs, audiovisual recordings, personal journals, and other material.

The five tapes selected for preservation through this grant, though probably not produced by Matthews, reflect his embeddedness in LGBTQ activism and culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two of the tapes consist of recordings of Noche de Ambiente, in 1990 and 1991. Noche de Ambiente was a literary event produced by Modern Times bookstore, featuring readings by leading figures in Latin American and Latine literature.

Two other tapes include recordings of three of the numerous memorials for Matthews following his death in 1993. These events, held at Modern Times, the San Francisco Women’s Building, and the Mission Cultural Center, included a remarkable range of authors and activists that Matthews brought together through his literary institution building and organizing for LGBTQ liberation and Central American solidarity. A final tape, tantalizingly labeled “English Honduras,” similarly nods to Matthews’ commitments and relationships.

To learn more about the Tede Matthews collection, visit the GLBT Historical Society here.