Isaac Julien: The Attendant (1993)

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The plot revolves around sexual fantasies aroused in a middle-aged black male museum guard — or attendant — by a young white male visitor. Much of the action takes place after closing time. As the guard paces the galleries, a huge 19th-century painting titled “Slaves on the West Coast of Africa”, by the French artist François-Auguste Biard, comes to life, its melodramatic scene of a white master bending over a dying black slave transformed into an up-to-date, leather clad sadomasochistic grouping.

Luis F.Bernanza/Margaret Gilpin: Mariposas en el andamio (1996)

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by Luis Felipe Bernaza, Margaret Gilpin

After the Revolution, gays were not respected in Cuba, but in the small Havana neighborhood of La Güinera, a few courageous women came to power and encouraged the gay community. Glamorous gowns fashioned from grain sacks and eyelashes made out of carbon paper are the reality of drag in Cuba. In La Güinera, gay transvestite performers have earned respect and status through creative work for the neighbourhood. On stage action and backstage preparation opens out into insightful interviews with community leaders, families, and the performers themselves.

Bruce LaBruce: Super 8 1/2 (1993)

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LaBruce stars in this vaguely autobiographical look at a triple-X star-director caught in the downward spiral of his career. Remarks Googie, the art-house auteur who’s either exploiting LaBruce or launching his comeback, “He was actually attempting to break down the whole subject-camera relationship… It was as if he was an existentialist trapped in a porno star’s body.” Well, almost.

Jochen Hick, Andreas Strohfeldt: Out in East Berlin-Lesbians and Gays in the GDR (2013)

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Paragraph 175, which made homosexual behavior punishable by law, was abolished in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1968. At that time, heterosexual nuclear families constituted the center of socialist society, and homosexuality was considered a peripheral issue in the GDR. Out in East Berlin—Lesbians & Gays in the GDR tells the impressive-to-absurd personal histories […]

Marlon Riggs: Tongues Untied (1990)

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This is the acclaimed account of Black gay life by Emmy Award-winning director Marlon T. Riggs. Using poetry, personal testimony, rap and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others), Tongues Untied describes the homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men.

Želimir Žilnik: Marble Ass (1995)

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Marble Ass  Merlyn has been pacifying the Balkans, turning tricks with countless Serbian guys. Merlyn is a lighting rod sheltering Belgrade, calming violent nighthawks, swanky big spenders, miserable loners and horny young studs, taking on the charge that would otherwise befall little girls, unprotected mothers and helpless old women. Combined with guns, this unbridled energy […]

Derek Jarman: Blue (1990)

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Blue is at once Jarman’s most moving film and his most experimental and idiosyncratic. Visually, the film comprises of nothing more than a blue matt screen, over which Nigel Terry, John Quentin, Swinton and Jarman himself read passages from his diaries that poetically trace his struggle with AIDS, his increasing blindness, the loss of friends […]