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 Chantal Akerman • 1975 • France

In her provocative first feature, Chantal Akerman stars as an aimless young woman who leaves self-imposed isolation to embark on a road trip that leads to lonely love affairs with a male truck driver and a former girlfriend. With its famous real-time...

Directed by Derek Jarman • 1978 • United Kingdom
Starring Jenny Runacre, Little Nell, Toyah Willcox

When Queen Elizabeth I asks her court alchemist to show her England in the future, she’s transported 400 years to a post-apocalyptic wasteland of roving girl gangs, an all-powerful media mogul, fa...

Directed by Lucy Winer • 1981 • United States
Starring Rob Epstein, Jan Oxenberg, Terry Lawler

On October 14, 1979, LGBTQ+ history was made when tens of thousands of people converged on America’s capital for the first ever National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. This empowering ...

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...

Directed by Antonio Giménez Rico • 1983 • Spain
Starring Lorenzo Arana, René Amor, Francisco Pérez Cobos

This landmark documentary explores the lives and loves of a group of six transgender women living in Madrid in the years following Spain’s transition to democracy. But more than that, it’s a ...

Directed by Robert Epstein • 1984 • United States

A true twentieth-century trailblazer, Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised peop...

Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States

Donna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, DESERT HEARTS, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, by a woman. In this 1959-set film, adapted...

Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1985 • United States
Starring Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Ray Monge

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 ...

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 Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman • 1989 • United States

A tremendous, handmade monument to lives lost to AIDS, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt demonstrated that grief and activism together could forge a powerful symbol of resilience. Winner of the Academy Award for best documen...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • 1989 • United States

Marlon Riggs’s landmark documentary uses poetry, personal testimony, rap, and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others) to describe the homophobia and racism faced by Black gay men. The stories are often devastating: the man refused en...

Directed by Jennie Livingston • 1990 • United States
Starring Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Angie Xtravaganza

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African America...

Directed by Shu Lea Cheang • 1994 • United States
Starring Sarita Choudhury, Erin McMurtry, Abraham Lim

Taiwanese-born new-media visionary Shu Lea Cheang directs this avant-anarcho ecosatire, in which a lesbian couple living on Staten Island find themselves ensnared in a vast conspiracy involvin...

Directed by Maria Maggenti • 1995 • United States
Starring Laurel Holloman, Nicole Ari Parker, Maggie Moore

Breaking new ground in queer representation when it was released in 1995, this tender and charming tale of first love traces the tentative relationship that develops between two high-schoo...

Directed by Andrew Haigh • 2011 • United Kingdom
Starring Tom Cullen, Chris New

This sensual, remarkably observed, beautifully acted wonder is the breakout feature from British writer-director-editor Andrew Haigh. Rarely has a film been as honest about sexuality—in both depiction and discussi...

Directed by Leilah Weinraub • 2018 • United States

Charting the eight-year run of Shakedown, a peripatetic black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles, director Leilah Weinraub attempts “to portray the before and after of a utopic moment.” Weinraub presents a world unto itself, shaped by the desires...

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...

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 Jessica Dunn Rovinelli • 2019 • United States, France
Starring Edem Dela-Seshie, Thomas Love, Rachika S

This radical act of meta-adaptation transposes an unfinished novel by gay German writer Ronald M. Schernikau from 1980s West Berlin to 2018 Brooklyn. Centered on the intertwining l...