LGBTQ+ Favorites
20 Episodes
Proud, rebellious, colorful, intimate, and frank, these visions of LGBTQ+ life include beloved modern classics as well as hidden gems. From staples of the art-house canon (JE TU IL ELLE, QUERELLE) to highlights of the New Queer Cinema explosion (PARIS IS BURNING) and contemporary showstoppers from emerging talents (SHAKEDOWN), these films represent just a sample of the wide world of queer cinema, but they offer a taste of its breadth, creativity, and defiance in the face of adversity.
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1:47:36Episode 1
Portrait of Jason
Episode 1
Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1967 • United States
Starring Jason HollidayOn 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,...
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1:26:31Episode 2
Je tu il elle
Episode 2
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • France
Starring Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire WauthionChantal Akerman’s first narrative feature is a startlingly vulnerable exploration of alienation and the search for connection. In a performance at once daringly exposed and enigmatic, Akerman pl...
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Jubilee
Episode 3
Directed by Derek Jarman • 1978 • United Kingdom
Starring Jenny Runacre, Little Nell, Toyah WillcoxWhen 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...
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28:51Episode 4
Greetings from Washington, D.C.
Episode 4
Directed by Lucy Winer • 1981 • United States
Starring Rob Epstein, Jan Oxenberg, Terry LawlerOn 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 ...
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Querelle
Episode 5
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1982 • Germany
Starring Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne MoreauConjured from the unholy meeting of two iconoclastic queer artists, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film audaciously raises Jean Genet’s controversial novel to the level of myth. In an expressi...
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1:20:39Episode 6
Born in Flames
Episode 6
Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1983 • United States
Starring Honey, Adele Bertei, Jean SatterfieldThe film that rocked the foundations of the 1980s underground, this postpunk provocation is a DIY fantasia of female rebellion set in America ten years after a social-democratic cultural revolution. W...
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1:28:16Episode 7
The Times of Harvey Milk
Episode 7
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...
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1:31:40Episode 8
Desert Hearts
Episode 8
Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States
Starring Helen Shaver, Patricia CharbonneauDonna 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, ...
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1:17:58Episode 9
Mala Noche
Episode 9
Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1985 • United States
Starring Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Ray MongeWith 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 ...
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1:20:19Episode 10
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Episode 10
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...
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54:59Episode 11
Tongues Untied
Episode 11
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...
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1:17:28Episode 12
Paris Is Burning
Episode 12
Directed by Jennie Livingston • 1990 • United States
Starring Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Angie XtravaganzaWhere 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...
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54:20Episode 13
A Place of Rage
Episode 13
Directed by Pratibha Parmar • 1991 • United States
Starring Angela Davis, Alice Walker, June JordanFeaturing enlightening interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan, and Alice Walker, this essential documentary is an exuberant celebration of Black American women and their achievements. Within th...
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1:45:04Episode 14
Young Soul Rebels
Episode 14
Directed by Isaac Julien • 1991 • United Kingdom
Starring Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Sophie OkonedoFrom the moment Parliament’s “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” erupts over the opening of Isaac Julien’s breakthrough feature, we know we’re in for a wild ride. The changes keep coming as a murd...
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1:29:22Episode 15
Flaming Ears
Episode 15
Directed by A. Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek, and Ursula Pürrer • 1992 • Austria
Starring Susanna Heilmayr, Ursula Pürrer, A. Hans ScheirlA tour de force of DIY visual invention, this underground sci-fi lesbian extravaganza has been newly restored to its Super 8 visual splendor. It’s the year 2...
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1:25:03Episode 16
The Watermelon Woman
Episode 16
Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie WalkerThe wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...
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Trick
Episode 17
Directed by Jim Fall • 1999 • United States
Starring Christian Campbell, John Paul Pitoc, Tori SpellingThe Doris Day–style romantic comedy gets a gay 1990s update in this charming, sweetly sexy tale of two Greenwich Village guys—shy aspiring Broadway composer Gabriel (Christian Campbell) and hu...
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Lan Yu
Episode 18
Directed by Stanley Kwan • 2001 • Hong Kong, China
Starring Liu Ye, Hu Jun, Huatong LiFilmed in secret in Beijing, this tender gay romance by Stanley Kwan combines the timeless conventions of classic melodrama with a radically frank depiction of queer intimacy as it traces, over the course of y...
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Weekend
Episode 19
Directed by Andrew Haigh • 2011 • United Kingdom
Starring Tom Cullen, Chris NewThis 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...
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Shakedown
Episode 20
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...