The Cinesexuals

From heartthrob to icon of edginess, the actor had an extraordinary career. On the centenary of his birth, Sophie Monks Kaufman wonders if we will see so daring a leading man again.

Hot Hollywood agent Diane is in crisis: her cute movie star client Mitchell is on the rise, on magazine covers and, to her horror, on the brink of coming out. It's time for straight-talking. "Are you British? Do you have a knighthood? If not, shut up!"

Basil Dearden’s 1961 film, Victim, represents a significant moment in British film history. Released into a world where sex between adult men in the United Kingdom was a heavily policed crime, it is the first British film to use the word homosexual inside a narrative that thoughtfully and unsensationally captures the cumulative daily stresses and deadly effects of the law.

Lest you assume you’d be signing up for a stuffy art history lesson or, even worse, a “wholesome” family-viewing experience by turning on a documentary about militantly queer multimedia artist David Wojnarowicz, a new documentary about his life and work lays it all out there in its title: Wojnarowicz: Fuck You Faggot Fucker.

Through her 'mockumentary' styled films, Cheryl Dunye gave insight into the way Black lesbians construct the world around themselves.

A related quandary presents itself with Savage Nights (an adequate though incomplete translation of the original French title, Les nuits fauves), written by, partially scored by, directed by, and starring a bisexual musician/composer/filmmaker who died of AIDS a little more than a year ago. Because it deals semiautobiographically with the reckless life-style of the filmmaker, Cyril Collard, presumably before as well as after he learned he was HIV-positive, it is not a movie that can be approached from any neutral corner.

The relation of life to art was undoubtedly even more melodramatic for a French audience because Collard, who was one of the first public figures in France to openly acknowledge being HIV-positive, was still alive when his film opened in France. In fact, he died only three days before Savage Nights swept the annual Cesar awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars), winning prizes for best film, best first film, best editing, and best new actress (Romane Bohringer), and it seems likely that given the circumstances under which they were awarded, the prizes had some political import.

Joel Edgerton’s 2018 film Boy Erased highlights the abuse faced by many LGBTQ+ Americans forced to attend gay conversion therapy. Boy Erased tells the true-life story of Arkansas young adult, Garrad Conley and his experience of living life as a gay man in the Christian church.

Elizabeth Purchell’s collage film Ask Any Buddy stitches together 100 adult films from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, illuminating aspects of everyday life amid the sex.

People have a lot of questions about the big penis, but like many penises before it, this one isn't all about size

Björn Andrésen was the striking child star of the classic film, the perfect embodiment of youthful beauty. Fifty years on, he is still haunted by the exploitation that continued long after filming

An introduction to the history of queer films from Korea, their development, where and how these films have been screened and more.

Q-Force is nicer than Archer. By "nicer" I mean exactly what you think I mean: It's warmer, kinder, more interested in showing how much its characters care about, and look out for, one another. If that surprises you, you're not alone. Come sit here by me.

Kino on Video, with Filmmuseum Müenchen, has done the right thing for film history in issuing three DVDs billed as “Gay-Themed Films of the German Silent Era.” They vary in artistry, but as documents of society and its values, their value is immeasurable. Richard Oswald’s Different from the Others (1919) may be the oldest “gay movie” of feature length in existence. Carl Theodor Dreyer‘s Michael (1924) offers a look at a rare silent work of one of the cinema’s leading directors. And William Dieterle’s Sex in Chains (1928) has a candid story of prison love, a subject that would be taboo for years to come.

OPINION: The late renowned actor gave us tough, passionate, and nuanced representations of queer men on screen in an industry that scared cis-het Black entertainers from doing such.

It's Pride Month, as a whole lot of rainbow corporate logos have already told you. It's a great time to march, and to party, and to be marketed to. But it's also an opportunity to learn your queer history, and a self-curated LGBTQ film festival is a great way to do that. Let us help.

The existence of gay-for-pay performers (men who do not identify as homosexual but who perform sexual acts with and/or for other men on camera) complicates even the most basic assumptions and analyses of gay male pornography.

The following dialogue condenses several letters exchanged between us during the evolution of this Special Section on "Gays and Film" and supplements it with excerpts from a taped discussion we had in Montreal in July. We thought it important to bring out some points the articles and reviews only briefly touched on in the Special Section.

The main suggestions I'd like to make in this article about gay male pornographic cinema are quite brief and simple. Broadly I'm going to argue that the narrative structure of gay porn[1] is analogous to aspects of the social construction of both male sexuality in general and gay male sexual practice in particular.

At this point in his career, David Halperin commands attention as one of the leading theorists of gay, lesbian, and queer studies in the United States. Anyone working in these fields will want to consult his latest book How to Be Gay, a vast, sprawling study of the state of gay culture—its history, its permutations over the decades, and its current state of disavowed but enduring relevance not only to gay people but to those interested in “culture” generally.

What follows is an examination of gay motifs and images as they figure in six films by Bernardo Bertolucci—THE GRIM REAPER (1961), BEFORE THE REVOLUTION (1964), RIGOLETTO (1970), THE CONFORMIST (1970), LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972), 1900 (1976).

Gender and queer studies books are famous for apologizing to the various groups they gloss over or exclude. If a study intends to address sexuality, for example, and ends up being mostly about white gay men, reasons are given for leaving out lesbians, people of color, and sometimes the poor. Roy Grundmann’s recent book, called Andy Warhol’s “Blow Job,” is different.

Smallville is a show about secrets and silences. Its multiple narrative threads depend upon a vast and thriving network of lies, secrets, deferrals, misrepresentations, backward glances, and half truths — all of which coalesce, in one way or another, around the character of Clark Kent.

Slowly and delicately drawing attention and care from the audiences, "In the Family" comes to us as a simple story about one family matter. Never disrupting its slow but steady pace throughout its long running time (169 minutes), it gives us a real slice of life through its intimate human drama filled with realistic characters, and there are many scenes deeply resonating with empathy and understanding behind its composed but caring attitude.