A powerful exposé on gay conversion programs, revealing the damage inflicted by shame and repression through intimate testimonies from current members and former leaders of the pray the gay away movement.
At a time in the United States when the tech sector outpaces the overall growth of the employment market, CODE asks the important question: Where are all the women?
A documentary about the Berlin nightclub Eldorado, which was an important meeting place for the queer scene in the 1920s until it had to close in the spring of 1933 in the wake of the Nazi takeover. The film uses archival footage and interviews as well as re-enacted scenes of the goings-on in the club.
In 1976, Karen and Barry Mason had fallen on hard times and were looking for a way to support their young family when they answered an ad in the Los Angeles Times. Larry Flynt was seeking distributors for Hustler Magazine. What was expected to be a brief sideline led to their becoming fully immersed in the LGBT community as they took over a local store, Circus of Books. A decade later, they had become the biggest distributors of gay porn in the US. The film focuses on the double life they led, trying to maintain the balance of being parents at a time when LGBT culture was not yet accepted. Their many challenges included facing jail time for a federal obscenity prosecution and enabling their store to be a place of refuge at the height of the AIDS crisis. Circus of Books offers a rare glimpse into an untold chapter of queer history, and it is told through the lense of the owners' own daughter, Rachel Mason, an artist, filmmaker and musician.
Caitlyn Jenner's unlikely path to Olympic glory was inspirational. But her more challenging road to embracing her true self proved even more meaningful.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
Filmed over five years in Kansas City, this documentary follows four transgender kids – beginning at ages 4, 7, 12, and 15 – as they redefine “coming of age.” These kids and their families show us the intimate realities of how gender is re-shaping the family next door in a unique and unprecedented chronicle of growing up transgender in the heartland.
Overlooked by history, Pauli Murray was a legal trailblazer whose ideas influenced RBG's fight for gender equality and Thurgood Marshall's landmark civil rights arguments. Featuring never-before-seen footage and audio recordings, a portrait of Murray's impact as a non-binary Black luminary: lawyer, activist, poet, and priest who transformed our world.
Decades after his play first put gay life center stage, Mart Crowley joins the cast and crew of the 2020 film to reflect on the story's enduring legacy.
Women of Troy is an HBO Sports documentary exploring the transcendent career of the Cheryl Miller-led USC Trojans and their impact on women’s basketball.
An unfaithful newly-wed wife, an estranged father, a priest and an angry son suddenly find themselves in the most unexpected predicaments, each poised to experience their destiny, all on one fateful day.
The history of New York’s Meatpacking District, told from the perspective of transgender sex workers who lived and worked there. Filmmaker Kristen Lovell, who walked “The Stroll” for a decade, reunites her community to recount the violence, policing, homelessness, and gentrification they overcame to build a movement for transgender rights.
People who knew R. perceived her as a happy woman. A woman from Brno in her thirties who moved to Sweden together with her Slovak husband, psychiatrist Ivan. In their new home country, the young couple bought a house and had two children. It seemed that R.’s life would continue in a predictable way. As a distraction from the routine, she chose an unusual hobby. She created a male alter-ego and started writing novels for LGBTQ+ audiences. R. was happy but felt empty on the inside. She could only fill it by living out her true self. Things started speeding up and R. began changing. R. is now Marvin. And Marvin is a man.
At 82 years old, Lula is every inch the rebel. An openly gay man in communist Poland, he organized underground parties and after-curfew salons of men inside private apartments. He enthusiastically took up drag, despite a fiercely homophobic culture, to free himself from the stifling correctness of the 80s. But now, he's an old, single man in a youth-obsessed world. His friend was crushed by depression and killed himself, but somehow Lula, now Poland's oldest drag queen, remains buoyant. Is he escaping loneliness with his constant clubbing, looking for love yet again to insulate himself against what he knows is coming? Lula isn't waiting for approval. Filmmaker Bogna Kowalczyk's energetic portrait pairs with her subject's kinetic drive, right down to the stellar soundtrack and nimble camerawork. Whether it's meeting fans at Pride or selecting an artist to sculpt his specialty crematorium urn, try to keep up with a man who knows life is to be lived out loud.
Amber belongs to a queer generation which no longer wants society to dictate their identity. The teenagers proudly inhabit a spectrum of fluid identities and master their first loves and losses.
Traveling back to the places where he grew up, Dustin Lance Black explores his childhood roots, gay identity and close relationship with his mother, who overcame childhood polio, abusive marriages and Mormon dogma, while becoming Black’s emotional rock and, ultimately, the inspiration for his activism. With a wealth of personal photographs and candid memories from Black’s family, colleagues, and friends, this documentary embraces the personal to tell a universally hopeful tale of resilience and reconciliation through the power of love and shared stories.
As Hungary’s political climate becomes increasingly radicalized, Virág, a former green politician, loses faith in the democratic parliament of Hungary and retires from politics. She and her musician partner Nóra decide to adopt a child and focus on building a family together. With a sensitive lens and close access, directors Asia Dér and Sári Haragonics follow the two women through their long and ultimately successful adoption process to bring home their young daughter of Roma origins. But tensions begin to rise between the two as Virág thrives in her role as mother and Nóra struggles to find her place within the family. As the rising tides of hate and homophobia in Hungary begin to overflow into their family, their lives hit a boiling point and they must face the difficult decision of whether to leave their country behind.
This is the intimate untold story of the legendary painter, Carlos Almaraz. It chronicles the life of an extraordinary artist and his impact on the Chicano Art Movement; the challenges, the demons, the struggles, the travels, the explorations through sexuality and art movements around the globe. A new and essential perspective shares the artist's full dimensionality in his unique and often humorous voice. It offers a complete view of the complex man, artist, activist, husband, and father. Offering an intimate portrait of a precocious East Los Angeles youth, struggling New York artist, spiritual seeker, intellectual, cultural worker, activist, charismatic leader of the Chicano Art Movement, comrade to Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union and an artist pursuing his dreams. It also shines a light upon the insidious dimensions of the AIDS epidemic during the 80's.
The powerful and inspiring true story of the controversial human rights campaigner whose provocative acts of civil disobedience rocked the British establishment, revolutionised attitudes to homosexuality and exposed world tyrants. As social attitudes change and history vindicates Peter's stance on gay rights, his David versus Goliath battles gradually win him status as a national treasure. The film follows Peter as he embarks on his riskiest crusade yet by seeking to disrupt the FIFA World Cup in Moscow to draw attention to the persecution of LGBT+ people in Russia and Chechnya.
This documentary tells the story of great love, bitter disappointments and self-doubts - but most of all of courage. The courage to take risks, try something new and be yourself - no matter what age. The film dives deeply into the exceptional and heart-warming stories of a group of transsexuals and drag queens in their sixties and seventies, who summon up their bravery to take to the stage one last time. For two years they have been touring in five continents, basking in the success of a spectacular show called Gardenia, directed by Alain Platel and Frank Van Laecke. Now, as the show comes to a close, the glamorous aging performers must leave the limelight and go home to the quiet lives they left behind.
Going deeper than fine fabrics and silk linings, Suited takes a modern, evolved look at gender through the conduit of clothing and elucidates the private and emotional experience surrounding it. With heart and optimism, the film documents a cultural shift that is creating a new demand—and response—for each person’s right to go out into the world with confidence.
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary (directeor Jennie Livingston) filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, chronicling the ball culture of New York City and the poor, African American and Latino gay and transgendered community involved in it. Many consider Paris Is Burning to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the \Golden Age\ of New York City drag balls and exploration of queer culture
Known for his campy, totally funky music videos, Todrick Hall—a vibrant, lovable, and fabulously gay artist bursting with creative energy—takes you behind the scenes as he launches his most ambitious project to date: the original stage musical Straight Outta Oz.
Gender activist Diane Torr’s worldwide appearances and workshops are now legendary. For the past thirty years, the main focus of this performance artist’s work has been an exploration of the theoretical, artistic as well as the practical aspects of gender identity. Katarina Peters’ documentary observes a Diane Torr workshop in Berlin in which a group of open-minded women come together to discover the secrets of masculinity. What makes a man a man and a woman a woman? Precisely when and where is gender identity formatted? How much is nature and how much nurture? Each of Torr’s workshops represents an open-ended laboratory experiment in social behaviour in which the question is posed: is it possible to deliberately play out different roles and create a space in which to transgress both masculine and feminine characteristics?
Queerness on television has moved from subtext,in series such as Xena: Warrior Princess,to all-out multi season relationships between women, as seen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost Girl, and Carmilla. But things still aren’t perfect. In 2016, a record number of queer women died on fictional shows, which broke the hearts of queer fans and launched a successful fight for better,more diverse LGTBQ2S+ representation. Stars such as Ilene Chaiken, Stephanie Beatriz, Lucy Lawless and Angelica Ross join with the voices of numerous kickass fangirls in this fast-paced history of queer women’s representation of contemporary television. Queering the Script not only charts the evolution of queerness, but also demonstrates the extraordinary impact of activism on its many diverse fans,ensuring that they see themselves accurately portrayed onscreen.
Posing as a wealthy, jet-setting diamond mogul, an Israeli conman wooed women online then conned them out of millions of dollars. Now some victims plan for payback.
This documentary looks at the surge in political violence through the story of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, showing the roots of anti-government sentiment and its reverberations today, along with the emotionally charged warnings of those who suffered tragic losses in the deadliest homegrown attack in U.S. history.
As Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the Harry Potter films, David Holmes’ work has been seen worldwide by millions of people. Tragically an on-set accident ended what David calls “the best job in the world,” leaving him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Like the on-screen character he helped bring to life, David is determined to continue seeking adventure and living life to the fullest despite mounting obstacles.
A young mother’s mysterious death and her son’s subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman’s true identity, and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all.
