USA

Barbara Caspar: Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker ? (2008)

Posted March 11, 2016 · Add Comment

A multi-layered work featuring animation, archival footage and interviews with the likes of William Burroughs, Carolee Schneemann and Richard Hell, Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker by Austrian artist Barbara Caspar and co-produced by Annette Pisacane (Nico Icon) and Markus Fischer, is a thoughtful and creative film biography/essay on the late outlaw writer and punk icon, whose formally inventive novels, published from the ’70s through the mid-’90s, challenged assumptions about gender roles, sexuality, and the literary canon.

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Wu Tsang: Wildness (2012)

Posted December 22, 2014 · Add Comment

Directed by Wu Tsang. Wildness is a portrait of the Silver Platter, a historic, LGBT-friendly bar on the eastside of Los Angeles that has catered to the Latin immigrant community since 1963. With a magical-realist flourish – the bar itself becomes a character in the film – Wildness captures the creativity and conflict that ensue when a group of young, queer artists of colour (Wu Tsang, DJs NGUZUNGUZU and Total Freedom) organise a weekly performance art party, called Wildness, at the bar. What does ‘safe space’ mean, and who needs it? The search for answers to these questions creates coalitions across generations.

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Michael Kasino: Pay it No Mind: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson (2012)

Posted September 30, 2014 · Add Comment

This feature-length documentary focuses on revolutionary trans-activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson, a Stonewall instigator, Andy Warhol model, drag queen, sex worker, starving actress, and Saint. “Pay It” captures the legendary gay/human rights activist as she recounts her life at the forefront of The Stonewall Riots in the 1960s, the creation of S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Sylvia Rivera in the ’70s, and a New York City activist throughout the ’80s and early ’90s. Through her own words, as well as in-depth interviews with gay activist Randy Wicker, former Cockettes performer Agosto Machado, author Michael Musto, Hot Peaches founder/performer, Jimmy Camicia, and Stonewall Activists Bob Kohler, Danny Garvin, Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt, and Martin Boyce, Marsha’s story lives on.

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Shola Lynch: Free Angela and All Political Prisioners (2012)

Posted May 2, 2014 · Add Comment

Writer/director Shola Lynch follows up her 2004 documentary Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed with this film centered on the struggle of educator and activist Angela Davis, an outspoken UCLA professor whose affiliation with the Communist Party and the Black Panthers landed her on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list while challenging our perceptions of political […]

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Morty Diamond: Trans Entities. The Nasty love of Papi’ and Wil (2007)

Posted April 8, 2014 · Add Comment

This movie by Morty Diamond captures a real couple discussing their sex, sexuality and gender identity while also having hot, sensual sex as the camera rolls. This is one of the first transgender erotic movies to discuss and demonstrate role play as a rich and meaningful part of a couple’s sex life. Papi’ and Wil […]

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Kortney R. Ziegler: STILL BLACK – A Portrait of Black Transmen (2009)

Posted April 8, 2014 · Add Comment

STILL BLACK: A Portrait of Black Transmen is brought to life by the stories of six thoughtful, eloquent and diverse transmen. Preachers, teachers, students and activists educate us simply by making their presence known. Each man brings a colorful and complex richness as he describes his relationship to himself, as well as others in his […]

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Sam Feder / Julie Hollar: Boy I am (2006)

Posted January 30, 2014 · Add Comment

An important exploration of issues rarely touched upon by most films portraying female-to-male (FTM) transgender experiences, this feature-length documentary sets itself apart from other recent films on this topic. Tackling the resistance of some women in feminist and lesbian communities who view FTM transitioning as at best a “trend” or at worst an anti-feminist act that taps into male privilege, this groundbreaking film opens up a dialog between the lesbian, feminist, and transgender communities while also promoting understanding of transgender issues for general audiences.

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Gabriel Baur: Venus Boyz (2002)

Posted December 1, 2013 · Add Comment

A legendary Drag King Night in New York is the point of departure for an odyssey to transgendered worlds, where women become men – some for a night, others for their whole lives. What motivates them. What changestake place? What do they dream of? The drag kings of New York meet in clubs and change lustfully into their male alter egos, parodying them and exploring male eroticism and power strategies. In London we see women experiment with hormones to become new men and “cyborgs”. Masculinity and transformation as performance, subversion or existential necessity. An intimate film about people who create intermediate sexual identities.

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Marlon Riggs: Tongues Untied (1990)

Posted January 28, 2013 · Add Comment

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.

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Susan Stryker/Victor Silverman: Screaming Queens – The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (2005)

Posted October 24, 2012 · Add Comment

It’s a hot August night in San Francisco in 1966. Compton’s Cafeteria, in the seedy Tenderloin district, is hopping with its usual assortment of transgender people, young street hustlers, and down-and-out regulars. The management, annoyed by the noisy crowd at one table, calls the police. When a surly cop, accustomed to manhandling Compton’s clientele, attempts […]

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Cheryl Dunye: The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Posted October 2, 2012 · Add Comment

Cheryl is young, Black, and lesbian, working in Philadelphia with her best friend Tamara on a project: to make a film about her search for a Black actress from Philly who appeared in films in the 30s and was known as the Watermelon Woman… Cheryl Dunye (born May 13, 1966) is a film director, producer, […]

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Pratibha Parmar: A Place of Rage (1991)

Posted October 2, 2012 · Add Comment

Classic documentary about the role of black women in the American civil rights movement – with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Pratibha Parmar has an impressive record when it comes to taking part in and documenting international black feminist movements. In addition to her work as a filmmaker, Parmar has published hugely influential […]