Directed by Jeanie Finlay • 2019 • United Kingdom
Starring Freddy McConnell
Freddy is thirty and yearns to start a family, but for him this ordinary desire comes with unique challenges: he is a gay transgender man. Deciding to carry his own baby took years of soul searching, but nothing could pr...
Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1991 • United States
Starring River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, William Richert
River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves star in this haunting tale from Gus Van Sant about two young street hustlers: Mike Waters, a sensitive narcoleptic who dreams of the mother who abandoned him, and ...
Directed by Patricia Rozema • 1987 • Canada
Starring Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, Ann-Marie MacDonald
Structured around a video-recorded confession, this charming, whimsical story about a waifish daydreamer with artistic aspirations won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1987 Cannes Film Fest...
Directed by Posy Dixon • 2021 • United States
Starring Beverly Glenn-Copeland
As a Black sci-fi obsessive living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released “Keyboard Fantasies” in Huntsville, Ontario, in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured...
Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1967 • United States
Starring Jason Holliday
On the night of December 2, 1966, Shirley Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. For twelve straight hours, they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang,...
Directed by Elegance Bratton • 2019 • United States
Starring Krystal Dixon, DeSean Irby, Jusheem Thorne
Elegance Bratton’s powerfully empathetic documentary is an immersion into the lives of the homeless queer and transgender youth who have forged a community of their own on downtown Manhattan’s...
Stories of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and the simple but radical, often dangerous act of just existing as a queer person are on display in these empathetic and innovative shorts, which reflect the wide spectrum of experiences that make up the LGBTQ+ rainbow.
Directed by Reinhold Schünzel • 1933 • Germany
Starring Renate Müller, Hermann Thimig, Hilde Hildebrand
In this dazzling musical romance, a young woman (Renate Müller), unable to find work as a music-hall singer, partners with a down-and-out thespian (Hermann Thimig) to revamp her act. Pretendin...
Directed by Akosua Adoma Owusu • 2016 • Ghana
Starring Kwame Edwin Otu
This epistolary short film invites us into the unsettled life of a young Ghanaian man struggling to reconcile his love for his mother with his queer identity amid the increased tensions incited by Ghana’s anti-LGBT politics. ...
Criterion Collection Edition #789
Made up of intimate, revelatory footage of the singular author and poet filmed over the course of five years, Howard Brookner’s 1983 documentary about William S. Burroughs was for decades mainly the stuff of legend; that changed when Aaron Brookner, the late dir...
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1982 • Germany
Starring Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau
Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film is a deliriously stylized tale of hothouse lust and simmering violence. Set amid an expressionistic soundstage vision of a French sea port, this da...
Criterion Collection Edition #407
With its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant’s debut feature MALA NOCHE heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film evokes a world of transient wo...
For Michelle Parkerson, filmmaking and activism are inextricably entwined. Using her camera to bring untold stories of Black and queer female identity to the screen as a producer and director, Parkerson has profiled trailblazing performers and activists such as influential jazz singer Betty Carte...
Directed by Barbara Hammer • 1982 • United States
An incredible document of the LGBT film scene in the early 1980s (as well as artist Barbara Hammer’s off-the-charts charisma), AUDIENCE finds Hammer working in a more straightforward documentary mode than usual. Hammer interviews her largely lesb...
Directed by Paul Schrader • 1985 • Japan, United States
Paul Schrader's visually stunning, collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between s...
An experimental short film and a prescient blackmail drama offer stirring indictments of a shameful time in British history when the law forbade homosexuality.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake
In the early 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional regi...
Like any facet of human identity, queerness is inextricably linked to matters of class, race, and socioeconomic status. It’s impossible to truly reckon with our sexuality without acknowledging this intersectional reality. In this latest edition of Queersighted—an ongoing series that takes a look ...
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker • 1970 • United States
Starring Stephen Sondheim, Elaine Stritch, Donna McKechnie
This legendary, long-unavailable documentary from Direct Cinema pioneer D. A. Pennebaker captures the behind-the-scenes drama that went into the making of a classic Broadway recording. ...
Directed by Jennifer Reeder • 2015 • Canada
Starring Kelsey Ashby-Middleton, Morgan S. Reesh, Marissa Castillo
Countdown to prom night is actually countdown to irreversible change for three girls. While two of them fall in love with each other against all expectations, the third is forced to mot...
Released the same year as PARIS IS BURNING, Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparicio’s extraordinary documentary THE SALT MINES focuses on three homeless Lantinx trans women living in a parking lot of old garbage trucks on Manhattan’s West Side. Aikin and Aparicio document the daily life and hardships fa...
Directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher • 2018 • United States
Welcome to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a one-of-a-kind oasis in the Ozarks where Christian piety rubs shoulders with a thriving queer community. Narrated with homespun humor by Mx Justin Vivian Bond, this lushly photographed docu...
Directed by Agnieszka Holland • 2020 • Czech Republic, Poland
Starring Josef Trojan, Ivan Trojan, Juraj Loj
Few true stories tread the thin line between good and evil as precariously as that of Jan Mikolášek, a Czech herbal healer whose great success masked the grimmest of secrets. Mikolášek (Iv...
Directed by Campbell X • 2012 • United Kingdom
Starring T’Nia Miller, Kyle Treslove, Robyn Kerr
The rare slice-of-life film to center the experiences of a Black butch lesbian, the debut feature from Campbell X focuses on JJ (T’Nia Miller), a lesbian stud, and her white gay “pretty boy” best frie...
