LGBTQ+ Favorites

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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LGBTQ+ Favorites
  • Portrait of Jason

    Episode 1

    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,...

  • Je tu il elle

    Episode 2

    Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • France
    Starring Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire Wauthion

    Chantal 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...

  • Jubilee

    Episode 3

    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...

  • Greetings from Washington, D.C.

    Episode 4

    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 ...

  • Querelle

    Episode 5

    Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1982 • Germany
    Starring Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau

    Conjured 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...

  • Born in Flames

    Episode 6

    Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1983 • United States
    Starring Honey, Adele Bertei, Jean Satterfield

    The 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...

  • 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...

  • Desert Hearts

    Episode 8

    Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States
    Starring Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau

    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, ...

  • Mala Noche

    Episode 9

    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 ...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • Paris Is Burning

    Episode 12

    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...

  • A Place of Rage

    Episode 13

    Directed by Pratibha Parmar • 1991 • United States
    Starring Angela Davis, Alice Walker, June Jordan

    Featuring 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...

  • Young Soul Rebels

    Episode 14

    Directed by Isaac Julien • 1991 • United Kingdom
    Starring Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Sophie Okonedo

    From 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...

  • Flaming Ears

    Episode 15

    Directed by A. Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek, and Ursula Pürrer • 1992 • Austria
    Starring Susanna Heilmayr, Ursula Pürrer, A. Hans Scheirl

    A 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...

  • The Watermelon Woman

    Episode 16

    Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
    Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie Walker

    The 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...

  • Trick

    Episode 17

    Directed by Jim Fall • 1999 • United States
    Starring Christian Campbell, John Paul Pitoc, Tori Spelling

    The 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...

  • Lan Yu

    Episode 18

    Directed by Stanley Kwan • 2001 • Hong Kong, China
    Starring Liu Ye, Hu Jun, Huatong Li

    Filmed 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...

  • Weekend

    Episode 19

    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...

  • 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...