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...
Criterion Collection Edition #902
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 from a belove...
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 Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1978 • West Germany
Starring Volker Spengler, Ingrid Caven, Gottfried John
This heartrendingly compassionate tragedy from Rainer Werner Fassbinder traces the final days in the life of Elvira (Volker Spengler), a transgender woman spurned by her former lover...
Queer love and desire smolder behind bars in these unconventional holiday tales. Harry Lighton’s expectation-defying short WREN BOYS spins off in increasingly surprising directions as it unravels the relationships between an incarcerated man, his boyfriend on the outside, and an Irish Catholic pr...
Criterion Collection Edition #622
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 discussion—as this tale of a one-night stand that devel...
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 Basil Dearden • 1961 • United Kingdom
An extraordinary performance by Dirk Bogarde grounds this intense, sobering indictment of early-sixties social intolerance and sexual puritanism. Bogarde plays Melville Farr, a married barrister who is one of a large group of closeted London men ...
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 c...
Directed by Naïla Guiguet • 2020 • France
Starring Dustin Muchuvitz, Félix Maritaud, Raya Martigny
In an abandoned warehouse, a crowd—including a young transgender woman and her boyfriend—dances as one to techno music. As the night wears on, collective hysteria morphs into sweet melancholy, and ...
For decades, the queer experience on-screen was defined by invisibility and marginalization. The trailblazing works of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have been instrumental in changing that. Since the 1970s, when he contributed to the Mariposa Collective’s WORD IS OUT—a landmark documentary tha...
Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland • 2020 • United States
The brilliant work, personal struggles, and cultural impact of American writers Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams explode onto the screen in this innovative dual-portrait documentary. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland masterfully coll...
Two nuanced, emotionally raw queer romances get real about the intricacies of love, sex, and relationships. In Matthew Puccini’s sensitively observed, award-winning short DIRTY, a young couple’s relationship is put to the test as they navigate intimacy together for the first time. Its tender yet ...
Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1997 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing
One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheun...
In 1994, Marlon Riggs died from AIDS at the tragically young age of thirty-seven. Riggs’s untimely passing robbed the world of an artist of uncommon vision and empathy, but not of his work’s ability to galvanize and inspire future generations. This program comprises a selection of stylistically a...
Two visions of love and longing among military men unfold amid lush, senses-stunning landscapes in these ravishing cinematic hallucinations. An island overrun by hydrangeas whose rich purple color seems to drip from each frame is the dreamily apocalyptic setting for a romance between two soldiers...
Directed by Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore • 1981 • United Kingdom
Starring Gilbert Prousch, George Passmore
See the world through the beautiful, humorous, shocking, and absurd lens of British “living sculpture” provocateurs Gilbert & George, a couple in life and art-making whose defiantly ...
