Ahead of the Curve tells the story of Curve Magazine – the long-standing, iconic lesbian publication that your mother dragged you past at the newsstand. Franco Stevens founded the magazine (originally named “Deneuve”) thirty one years ago and now we find her considering its future. We travel back to the 90s, as a band of feisty young lesbians responsible for the …
Directed and written by its two main actors, and based on real events, this debut film is a tender and loving reminder of the healing power of love and the enduring strength of human connection. After a spate of failed heterosexual endeavors, Ben, a bisexual man turns back towards the gay community. As Ben emerges from the closet, a relationship …
How many people can say that they cured 20 million people of a mental illness overnight? Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings can. Watch this triumphant roller coaster account of how they take on the psychiatric establishment, armed with data from Evelyn Hooker and other pioneering researchers. Watch a brave psychiatrist testify to his colleagues in a full mask to convey …
Gene attends a slumber party with his four drama club friends, a final goodbye before each departs for college in 1994. This is the night he has selected to finally come out of the closet. In this moment of cross roads, the group slowly opens up to one another over antics, theatrics, and pizza. Gene’s relationship with the pizza delivery …
Damn These Heels Closing Night Centerpiece. Flee uses archival footage and a beautiful, animated style to tell this powerful documentary executive produced by Riz Ahmed (The Night Of, Sound of Metal) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) and is written and directed by Jonas Poher. This hand-drawn illustrated feature is gorgeous and haunting and it is bolstered by a superb score …
When director Monika Treut set out at the end of the 1990s to make a film about the emerging phenomenon of ‘trans’ (transgender, transsexuality), it was to San Francisco, the epicentre of the trans scene, that she headed. With her documentary, Gendernauts (1999), she created a cinematic tribute to all the fascinating artists she met during her journey through the land of …
(“Si c’était de l’Amour”) Fifteen young dancers of different origins and horizons are on tour with ‘Crowd’, Gisèle Vienne’s epic dance piece exploring the 90’s rave scene. From theatre to theatre, the work mutates into strange, intimate relationships. Is the stage contaminating real life – or the opposite? A disturbing journey exploring our nights, our parties, our loves.
A young couple, Alexander and Mari, in Georgia struggle to live their best lives. Alexander is trans and living in secrecy due to the oppressive state of LGBTQIA+ life in their country. The hurdles keep coming: from problems finding employment, to the struggle of obtaining hormone therapy without doctors, to the difficulty in leaving the country. The couple’s hopelessness mounts …
Lane, Bertie and Fred once shared a polyamorous relationship in New Orleans. Lane loved Bertie, Fred loved Bertie, they had a balance that worked… until it didn’t, and Lane vanished from their lives. Two years later, Bertie and Fred have gotten married and are living at Fred’s family home in the countryside of southern France. When Lane unexpectedly shows up …
When the body of a murdered trans woman is discovered in a soy field in Brazil, the death of the titular Madalena has ripple effects that lap at the people and even the natural landscape of her town. Mapping Madelena’s impact and thereby her character, value, and spirit through the ongoing lives of those she has left behind, Marcheti reimagines …
Fifteen years before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat, a full decade before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned separate-but-equal legislation, Pauli Murray was already knee-deepfighting for social justice.A pioneering attorney, activist, priestand dedicatedmemoirist, Murray shapedlandmark litigation—and consciousness—around race and gender equity. As an AfricanAmerican youth raised in the segregated South—who was also wrestling withbroader notions of gender identity—Pauli …
American jazz musician Billy Tipton developed a reputable touring and recording career in the mid-twentieth century, along with his band The Billy Tipton Trio. After his death in the late 80s, it was revealed that Tipton was assigned female at birth, and his life was swiftly reframed as the story of an ambitious woman passing as a man in pursuit …
Five scrappy queer comic book artists journey from DIY work and isolation to the cover of Time Magazine and the international stage, offering a fascinating window into everything from the AIDS crisis and workplace discrimination to the search for love and a good haircut. Their work and personal stories are sure to make you laugh, but also make you think …
North By Current premiered at the 2021 Berlinale where it was nominated for the Teddy Award for Best Documentary and then went on to play the Tribeca Film Festival. Taking the viewer home with him to rural Michcigan, trans director Angelo Madsen Minax pieces together the story of a family tragedy: the death of his sister Jesse’s child. This film comes …
A box of letters, held in secret for nearly 60 years, ignites a 5-year exploration into a part of LGBT history that has never been told. The letters, written in the 1950s by a group of New York City drag queens, open a window into a forgotten world where being yourself meant breaking the law and where the penalties for …
Half dark comedy dystopia, half cheeky autobiography, Wes Hurley explores his own history and that of his mother Elena, their survival through the chaotic and violent years of Perestroika in Vladivostok, Russia, and their rocky emigration to America. An innovative, creative, and singular style brings the audience into their life of hardship in the Soviet Union. Young Potato’s transnational journey …
RAW! UNCUT! VIDEO! is the unabridged, unflinching, explicit, and honest story of gay porn studio, Palm Drive Video, and its creators Jack Fritscher and Mark Hemry. Directors Ryan A. White and Alex Clausen document the rise and fall of this grassroots establishment and its long lasting, far reaching influence on the porn scene and our erotic imaginations. A devoted couple, they …
In 1980s London, a group of young lesbians are struck by inspiration to follow their desires. Leaving their linen fabrics and peace-camp protests behind, they don black leather instead and open a club for the BDSM practicing and curious. Before long, a rift grows between these rebel dykes and the other dykes in London, along the lines of sex: isn’t …
From Legendary filmmaker Bruce LaBruce (Hustler White, The Raspberry Reich) comes his latest feature, Saint Narcisse, which tells the story of a young man on a quest to reconnect with a mother he previously thought dead. His journey leads him to the remote woods of Quebec, where a nearby monastery harbors a dark secret from his past. Starring Félix-Antoine Duval as a …
Six trans women travel to a small town in León where they will explore unusual landscapes, as well as the ins and outs of their own personalities.
A decade after abruptly breaking up with Naomi, Kris invites her to dinner to catch-up on their complicated lives, relationships, and Kris’ transition. Over the course of a one night encounter, they engage in a series of increasingly intimate and vulnerable conversations, before a shocking revelation is unveiled. See You Then focuses on the universal truth that no matter how much you change, …
Champagne Horowitz Jones Dickerson White (a divorcée and exotic dancer from the wrong side of the tracks) uses “all the right moves” to single-handedly take on the largest sex, drug and back-to-school clothing ring in the country, Mall-Wart.
The short films in Through The Cracks are waiting for you somewhere in between. In vibrant, distinct shades of grey these stories exist in liminal space, where queerness feels most ripe and most right. Stories of those people, places, and experiences that are by definition undefinable constitute this program, defying categorization and proving the true value and energy in bursting out of …
Missed Connections makes a home for stories about rupture, failure, longing, and accident. Heartbreak as well as hope permeates these short films that each exist in the space between people, space that is sometimes bridged and sometimes not, but always present. While the relationships in these stories perhaps miss the mark, triumph finds its way into the program through self discovery, …
Queer family, chosen and otherwise, constitute the connection between the films that fall in the Apples & Trees program. Parents and their children navigate the complexities of coming out, staying out, and living out in this collection of shorts desiccated to the space between generations.
An older and high strung New York Times travels to Israel to do a story about the city of Tel Aviv. Though disillusioned with his assignment, he is soon reinvigorated by the energy of the young man he is subletting from. The two quickly develop a relationship, bonding over their intergenerational differences and a shared need to learn from one …
With every note diligently studied, Marin Alsop stands before a hundred instrumentalists, elegantly weaving their individual sounds with a delicate precision and fervent passion. Musically inclined from a very early age, with a dedication to the art of ensemble work and orchestration, and mentors the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Marin Alsop has rightfully earned Music Directorships from some of the …
Alone in her room, Casey and her computer screen spend hours glued to one another. Seeking to scratch an itch for otherworldly transformation, she enters an online horror role playing game, joining a vast web of similarly curious strangers online. As her world continues to blend at the edges with the World’s Fair community, she makes unlikely connections and is …
