FILM
Discovery a Piece of History
The Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Artists in the Entertainment Industry (AGLA) was founded in 1982. During its most active period in the 1980s, the organization presented its annual AGLA Media Awards to "responsible" representations of lesbian and gay characters and issues.
Reading is Fundamental
Queer Cinema in America : an Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Films, Characters, and Stories. Aubrey Malone. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2020.
This lively yet authoritative reference source explores the sea change ushered in by such stars as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s and '40s, androgynous figures such as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Marlon Brando in the '50s, and closeted gay men such as Rock Hudson and Liberace, whose double lives were exposed by the scourge of AIDS. Features include:
A timeline highlights key events in LGBTQ cinema history.
An introduction overviews the history of queer cinema in America.
Alphabetically arranged reference entries provide fundamental and critical information about films, directors, actors, themes, and other topics related to queer cinema in America.
Entry bibliographies direct readers to additional sources of information.
Out at the Movies : a History of Gay Cinema. Expanded edition. Harpenden, Herts: Kamera Books, 2016.
Over the decades, gay cinema has reflected the community's journey from persecution to emancipation to acceptance. Politicized dramas like Victim in the 60s, The Naked Civil Servant in the 70s, and the AIDS cinema of the 80s have given way in recent years to films which celebrate a vast array of gay life-styles. Gay films have undergone a major shift, from the fringe to the mainstream and 2005s Academy Awards were dubbed the Gay Oscars.
Potter, Susan. Queer Timing : the Emergence of Lesbian Sexuality in Early Cinema. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
This book offers a counter history that reorients accepted views of lesbian representations and spectatorship in early cinema. Potter draws on queer theory, silent film historiography, feminist film analysis, and archival research to provide an original and innovative analysis.
Bell-Metereau, Rebecca Louise. Transgender Cinema. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019.
Reveals the scope of how trans people have been depicted on screen, starting with Charlie Chaplin’s comic drag scenes and culminating in current hits like Transparent and A Fantastic Woman. It analyzes classic Hollywood movies, indie films, documentaries, world cinema, television, and trans filmmakers and actors.
Foster, David William. Queer Issues in Contemporary Latin American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
Viewing contemporary Latin American films through the lens of queer studies reveals that many filmmakers are exploring issues of gender identity and sexual difference, as well as the homophobia that attempts to defeat any challenge to the heterosexual norms of patriarchal culture.
Powell, Ryan. Coming Together : the Cinematic Elaboration of Gay Male Life, 1945-1979. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Captures the social and political vitality of the first wave of movies made by, for, and about male-desiring men in the United States between World War II and the 1980s. From the underground films of Kenneth Anger and the Gay Girls Riding Club to the gay liberation-era hardcore films and domestic dramas of Joe Gage and James Bidgood, Powell illuminates how central filmmaking and exhibition were to gay socializing and worldmaking.
Barrios, Richard. Screened Out : Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Rapacious dykes, self-loathing closet cases, hustlers, ambiguous sophisticates, and sadomasochistic rich kids: most of what America thought it knew about gay people it learned at the movies. A fresh and revelatory look at sexuality in the Great Age of movie making, Screened Out s paints our fullest picture yet of how gays and lesbians were portrayed by the dream factory, warning that we shouldn't congratulate ourselves quite so much on the progress movies - and the real world -- have made since Stonewall.
Schoonover, Karl, and Rosalind Galt. Queer Cinema in the World. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
Proposing a radical vision of cinema's queer globalism, this book explores how queer filmmaking intersects with international sexual cultures, geopolitics, and aesthetics to disrupt dominant modes of world making. The authors move beyond the gay art cinema canon to consider a broad range of films from Chinese lesbian drama and Swedish genderqueer documentary to Bangladeshi melodrama and Bolivian activist video.
Lindner, Katharina. Film Bodies : Queer Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2018.
Takes existing debates into a new direction and integrates queer and feminist theory with film phenomenology. Film Bodies explores the female body's presence in a range of genres including the dance film, the sports film and queer cinema, moving across mainstream and independent cinema.
Venkatesh, Vinodh. New Maricón Cinema : Outing Latin American Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.
Presenting a comprehensive overview of recent queer cinema in Latin America, this pathfinding volume identifies a new vein of filmmaking that promotes affective relationships between viewers and homo/trans/intersexed characters. It covers feature films from Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Venezuela.
Keeling, Kara. Queer Times, Black Futures. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
Considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through whiteness. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. Includes a dedicated chapter to Black cinema and questions concerning film/media/technology.
Hart, Kylo-Patrick R. The AIDS Movie : Representing a Pandemic in Film and Television. New York: Haworth Press, 2000.
Scholars in the areas of popular culture, film, sociology, and gay and lesbian studies analyze the representation of AIDS in American films made in the first two decades of the pandemic. Giving you insight into the production and circulation of social meanings pertaining to HIV/AIDS, this study explores the social ramifications of such representations for gay men in American society, as well as for the rest of the population.
Watch Party 1: Feature Films/Movies
Wings
(1927)
(1927)
According to Queer Cinema in America (2020), Wings is the first gay kiss to be shown in feature films/American cinema.
Dog Day Afternoon
(1975)
(1975)
This movie tells the story of Sonny Wortzik, who, with his partner Salvatore Naturile, holds hostage the employees of a Brooklyn, New York City bank.
Desert Hearts
(1985)
(1985)
Swooning and sensual, this film was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, by a woman.
Mala Noche
(1985)
(1985)
An important prelude to the New Queer Cinema of the 90s. Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections, his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in taboo trysts and a tangled love triangle.
Watermelon Woman
(1996)
(1996)
Directed by a Black lesbian (Cheryl Dunye), this film depicts a lesbian woman and movie enthusiast who works in a video store. After discovering and taking exception to how Black women are uncredited/depicted as stereotypes in film history, she makes it her mission to learn more about one actress who was only noted as “The Watermelon Woman.”
MURDER and Murder
(1996)
(1996)
From acclaimed feminist filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, this is a middle-aged love story between Mildred, a life-long lesbian, and Doris, who is in love with a woman for the first time. An unflinching meditation on female aging, lesbian sexuality and breast cancer in a culture that glorifies youth and heterosexual romance.
Carol
(2015)
(2015)
Therese Belivet spots the beautiful, elegant Carol perusing the doll displays in a 1950s Manhattan department store. The two women develop a fast bond that becomes a love with complicated consequences.
Milk
(2008)
(2008)
Milk is a 2008 American biographical film based on the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
A look at three defining chapters in the life of Chiron, a young black man growing up in Miami. His epic journey to manhood is guided by the kindness, support and love of the community that helps raise him.
Tangerine follows the lives of two trans women who are close friends and engage in sex work, after one of them gets released from a month-long prison sentence. Sin-Dee learns that while she was in prison, her boyfriend and pimp cheated on her with a cis woman.
The Way He Looks
(2014)
(2014)
Set against the music of Belle and Sebastian, Brazilian writer-director Daniel Ribeiro's coming of age tale is a sweet and tender story about friendship and the complications of young love.
Rafiki
(2018)
(2018)
Despite a political rivalry between their families, Kena and Ziki remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.
Watch Party 2: Documentary Films
Filmmaker and artist Isaac Julien often creates work directly relating to experiences of black and gay identity including issues of class, sexuality, and artistic and cultural history. This documentary is an impressionistic antidote to the passionless, guilty AIDS awareness campaign conducted in Britain in 1987.
Oriented
(2015)
(2015)
Follows the lives of three gay Palestinian friends confronting their national and sexual identity in Tel Aviv. All three are conflicted by their desire for change in the face of a seemingly hopeless situation.
I Am Divine
(2013)
(2013)
Packed with great interviews and clips, this portrait of the legendary Divine brings to life a complex understanding of John Waters's favored muse. It tells the story from his humble beginnings as an overweight, teased Baltimore youth to internationally recognized drag superstar through his collaboration with filmmaker John Waters.
Marlon Troy Riggs was a filmmaker, poet, and gay rights activist. Watch these 3 short films:
(1) Anthem: an experimental music video asserting a defiant homoeroticism of African American male sexuality.
(2) Affirmations: explores black male dreams and desires and is framed by the poetry of Essex Hemphill.
(3) (No Regret) - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien: An intimate film presenting moving testimonials of five black gay men.
Times of Harvey Milk
(1984)
(1984)
One of the first feature documentaries to address gay life in America, it's a work of advocacy itself, bringing Milk's message of hope and equality to a wider audience. This exhilarating trove of original documentary material and archival footage is as much a vivid portrait of a time and place (San Francisco's historic Castro District in the seventies) as a testament to the legacy of a political visionary.
This award-winning documentary provides wonderful insight into the inspirations, aspirations and major aesthetic and content-based concerns of seven groundbreaking lesbian filmmakers. Featuring interviews as well as carefully chosen clips from each of its subjects' films, Lavender Limelight is an outstanding introduction to the work of our finest queer auteurs.
Queer China, Comrade China (2008)
China's most prolific homosexual filmmaker (Cui Zi'en) presents a comprehensive historical account of the queer movement in modern China. It documents the changes/developments in LGBT culture that have taken place in China over the last 80 years.
Chris feels neither man nor woman, but more like a 'Two-Spirit' in between genders. This sensitive film follows one eventful year in Chris Muth's life, from an operation in Thailand to an eventual return home to Switzerland, where Chris will become Christa.
(2006)
Tackling the resistance of some women in feminists and lesbian communities who view female-to male transitioning as at best a "trend" or at worst an anti-feminist act that taps into male privilege, this film opens up a dialog between the lesbian, feminist, and transgender communities while promoting understanding of transgender issues for general audiences.
