Exclusive Interview: creators of HBO’s Emmy-winning We’re Here Stephen Warren & Johnnie Ingram “drag can save lives”
With the first two episodes of season three of the Emmy & GLAAD Award-winning unscripted series We’re Here now streaming on HBO Max—and new episodes airing on Fridays at 10pm ET/PT on…
Queer African Cinemas: A Conversation with Lindsey B. Green-Simms
The first romantic sequence in Rafiki, by the Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu, opens with a close-up of a pair of sneaker-clad feet on a skateboard, its wheels thumping along the asphalt. The feet bel…
Lately we've seen a surge in films featuring gay characters whose sexuality feels refreshingly incidental to the plot. Post-gay movies can be love stories, dramas, or comedies, but what they all share is a recognition of gay people as part of the natural fabric of modern life.
Lately we've seen a surge in films featuring gay characters whose sexuality feels refreshingly incidental to the plot. Post-gay movies can be love stories, dramas, or comedies, but what they all share is a recognition of gay people as part of the natural fabric of modern life.
‘This Is Not Berlin’ Director Hari Sama on Sexuality, Mexico’s Racism Epidemic, and the Film’s ‘Roma’ Connection
We sat down with Hari Sama at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and the interview is being published on the occasion of This Is Not Berlin’s debut at Outfest in Los Angeles.
In the midst of Roma mania last awards season, a little film emerged at the Sundance Film Festival, also starring Marina de Tavira as a stalwart single mother: Hari Sama’s This Is Not Berlin. Led by newcomers Xabiani Ponce de León and José Antonio Toledano as Carlos and Gera, they play two high schoolers growing up in Mexico City. Bored with his high school’s machismo soccer culture, Carlos joins the small but radical queer and leftist community, participating in public displays of nudity to protest FIFA officials.
Originally posted in 2014 at The Vulgar Cinema Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin is a vague science fiction picture loaded with ima...
Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin is a vague science fiction picture loaded with images both abstract and very blunt. The content of those images twists around many different ideas, but my reading of this picture is specifically about what it means to be a transgender woman in a society that doesn't see that as normative behaviour.
How John Waters and Mink Stole made notorious cult film Pink Flamingos
‘As soon as I saw it with an audience I knew it could be a hit – even if you hated you had to tell someone about it. But I lost every time we were in court for obscenity’
‘When I saw it with an audience I knew it could be a hit – even if you hated it you had to tell someone about it. But I lost every time we were in court for obscenity’
One of our favourite queer Instagram accounts @askanybuddy delights in the rich history of how gay porn movies of the golden age of the 70s and 80s were advertised in print; the promotional stills,…
The private lives of Jodie Foster | Scanners | Roger Ebert
(AP photo)
Near the end of her remarkable Golden Globes speech, a monologue overflowing with teasing language and sly pop-culture references, actor-director Jodie Foster mentioned a dog whistle. Although she sometimes seemed to be speaking extemporaneously, while also incorporating pre-crafted phrases designed to say exactly what she intended to say (and, equally important, what she had no intention of saying), I thought the message, addressed primarily to those who have pressured her to publicly acknowledge her lesbianism for so many years, was clear and unambiguous -- except for the parts she deliberately wanted to leave ambiguous. And it's pretty much the same message she's been repeating since she was in college:
I value my privacy. Everything about being a performer makes it difficult to protect and maintain that privacy. I've been pressured to talk about my private life as a woman, formerly in a same-sex relationship with Cydney Bernard, who is raising two sons. And this is as much of a public "coming out" statement as you're going to get from me.
Exclusive Interview: Paris Is Burning director Jennie Livingston “I always felt that the balls were a kind of a church, a kind of ritual space”
To mark the thirtieth anniversary of Jennie Livingston’s (they/them) landmark documentary Paris Is Burning, the Criterion Collection have issued the film on Blu-Ray for the first time in a st…
Paris Is Burning remains Livingston’s only feature to date, they joke that they could “win trophies for world’s slowest filmmaker”. They are however currently in post-production on their second non-fiction feature, Earth Camp One and last year saw their television directing debut with an episode of Pose, the Emmy-winning series set in the world of ball culture that is heavily inspired by Livingston’s film
The director of South African movie MOFFIE, about homosexuality in the army during the Apartheid, pours his heart out as he talks about his insecurities as a filmmaker, trusting audiences, the role of music and much more, in exclusive interview
The director of South African movie MOFFIE, about homosexuality in the army during the Apartheid, pours his heart out as he talks about his insecurities as a filmmaker, trusting audiences, the role of music and much more, in exclusive interview
The worlds' first global online streaming for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer short films. By queers for queers. Watching LGBTIQ films has never been easier.
'Humour saved my life', says subversive director John Waters
Big smile flashing and pencil-thin moustache quivering, subversive director John Waters laughs heartily as he looks back at an improbable 40-year career that made him a trash film icon. "Humour saved me, saved my life," the 73-year-old sharp-dresser told AFP on the sidelines of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, where he was a guest of honour earlier this month. From a homemade horror stage in his garage, Waters went on to tear down barriers with transgressive fare such as "Eat Your Makeup", "Mondo Trasho", "Multiple Maniacs" and the scatological classic "Pink Flamingos" in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Waters tore down barriers with transgressive fare such as "Eat Your Makeup", "Mondo Trasho", "Multiple Maniacs" and the scatological classic "Pink Flamingos" in the late 1960s and early 1970s
There is no better evocation of the transition to democracy in Spain than the cinema of Eloy de la Iglesia. Colegas feels like a Pre-Code Warners film: fast, filled with incident, speaking t…
That Time Gay Movie Cruising, Starring Al Pacino, Filmed in NYC and People Freaked the F Out
A decade after the Oscar-winning success of The French Connection—maybe the definitive NYC cop movie?—William Friedkin returned to NYC cops with an edgy tale...
"CRUISING" Demonizes Gay Sexual Liberation - Rue Morgue
In his new column, playwright Justin McDevitt lends a queer eye to your favorite horror flicks.
I’ve been avoiding CRUISING.
On the surface, this 1980 Al Pacino flick has everything I want: gay filth and murder! I first heard about CRUISING through The Celluloid Closet, the 1995 documentary about portrayals of the LGBTQ community in film, and immediately learned about the backlash and protests surrounding it. Did that taint my viewing experience? Maybe.
William Friedkin's Cruising - Bright Lights Film Journal
The recent (2014) release of James Franco’s Interior. Leather Bar. reminds us it’s time to revisit the still-notorious film that inspired it. History shows us how easily yesterday’s cause celebre[...]
The recent (2014) release of James Franco’s Interior. Leather Bar. reminds us it’s time to revisit the still-notorious film that inspired it.
History shows us how easily yesterday’s cause celebre can become acceptable and even tame by present-day standards. Such is the case with William Friedkin’s underrated 1980 film Cruising.
Hidden Rainbows: 10 Underseen LGBT+ Horrors - Nightmare on Film Street
With horror being a respite for those who feel like outliers in society, it is no surprise filmmakers have turned to the genre when needing to communicate their emotions. Horror has importantly become a destination for contextualizing everything from personal fears to longstanding oppression. The LGBT+ community especially finds solace in horror — they identify […]
The LGBT+ community especially finds solace in horror — they identify with characters’ desire to escape and survive. Cruising, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, and Jennifer’s Body have certainly gained valid traction over the years, but what about other movies in need of attention? They, too, offer insight into the collective queer horror experience.
The Quietus | Film | Film Features | Weapon Of Shame: Filmmaker Oliver Hermanus On 'Moffie'
Tackling apartheid-era toxic white masculinity as a mixed race South African, filmmaker Oliver Hermanus rose to the challenge with his searing new feature Moffie, streaming on Curzon Home Cinema now. Olivia Neilson meets the director
Tackling apartheid-era toxic white masculinity as a mixed race South African, filmmaker Oliver Hermanus rose to the challenge with his searing new feature Moffie, streaming on Curzon Home Cinema now. Olivia Neilson meets the director
How Ryan Murphy's dreamy movieland tale, and interest in telling the stories of the marginalized, is nothing but an illusion.
And that could have been what Ryan Murphy, creator of Glee, American Horror Story, et al., and Ian Brennan tried to do: ask probing questions about how institutional power operates, what the meaning of screen representation is within a larger political context, what politics means in its knottiness in an industry that exists under capitalism. But, instead, in Hollywood, Murphy’s second venture for Netflix after The Politician, he spoon feeds us a fantasy so single-minded and one-dimensional, the tinsel of tinseltown has more depth.
Oscar winners and indie darlings, here are twenty of the most influential and impactful queer and trans stories of the past decade.
While we might not see it now, the 2010s have defined the trajectory of LGBTQ+ cinema for decades to come. After a century of being kept in the closet, outed, dehumanized, and othered onscreen and in the industry as a whole, LGBTQ+ filmmakers & actors are finally being given the opportunities to tell their own stories with the authenticity, tenderness, and depth they deserve.
A State of Uncertainty: Tsai Ming-liang on Days - Cinema Scope
There’s no exact precedent for the long creative collaboration between Tsai Ming-liang and Lee Kang-sheng. In 1991, as the story goes, Tsai stepped out of a screening of a David Lynch movie and spotted Lee sitting on a motorbike outside of an arcade.
You’ll say that the title is a little extravagant but that was the point. In fact, my idea was to make a list with good films. Some LGBT films have no...
You’ll say that the title is a little extravagant but that was the point. In fact, my idea was to make a list with good films. Some LGBT films have no interest except the one of talking of LGBT people but some LGBT films are little treasures, here they are
Leilah Weinraub’s riveting Shakedown, resituated on Pornhub
Leilah Weinraub’s riveting Shakedown
documents a Los Angeles strip club owned by and aimed at Black lesbians in the early years of the twenty-first century, and when it played festivals and arthouses a few years ago it plugged seamlessly into an obvious lineage of work centered on queer people of color building their own culture and institutions, from Paris is Burning (1990) to Kiki (2016).
Ron Peck obituary: filmmaker behind Nighthawks, Britain’s first feature set in the gay community
Peck, who has died aged 74, was a pioneer in Britain’s independent film scene of the 1970s and 80s, whose Nighthawks is a milestone in LGBTQIA+ cinema.
