As the groundbreaking, Grammy-winning rapper, singer, and songwriter Lil Nas X was about to embark upon his first tour last year, Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel were brought on board to document it. The co-directors were present to capture both the dazzling show itself—and the fans' poignant reaction to it—as well... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: filmmaker D. Smith centres Black transgender sex workers in Kokomo City “their stories needed to be told”
Filmmaker D. Smith's raw, provocative, and funny documentary, Kokomo City, that centres the stories of four captivating Black transgender women, in their own words, won both the NEXT Innovator Award and NEXT Audience Award when it world premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival. It went on to win the Audience Award in the Panorama... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Kristen Lovell & Zackary Drucker reclaim the history of New York’s transgender sex workers with Sundance award-winning The Stroll
Following its award-winning world premiere at Sundance in January, directors Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s outstanding feature The Stroll went on to open London's prestigious LGBTQ+ film festival BFI Flare, and last week the filmmakers were recognized with the John Schlesinger Award for Best Director of a Documentary at the Provincetown International Film Festival. Rich,... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Irish drag star Enda McGrattan aka Veda on HIV documentary How To Tell A Secret “art has always been a part of our activism”
The brilliant hybrid documentary How to Tell a Secret busts open the conversation about HIV in Ireland. Winner of Best Documentary Film at the Irish Film Festival London, the film offers stories of HIV+ people, queer and straight, and the culture of silence that often surrounds them. Breaking through that silence are two activists and podcasters... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: How to Tell a Secret ★★★★★
How To Tell A Secret is a documentary. How To Tell A Secret is a documentary about the filming of a documentary. How To Tell A Secret is a documentary about the filming of a documentary about the staging of a play. How To Tell A Secret is a documentary about the filming of a... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Gateways Grind ★★★1/2
The Gateways Club, or the Gates as it was known, was the centre of lesbian London for decades. A watering hole in the heart of Chelsea, it one of the only exclusively lesbian venues in London, frequented by a mix of women of all classes, including the likes of author Patricia Highsmith. Running from the... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: In Her Words – 20th Century Lesbian Fiction ★★★
Chronicling key figures in lesbian fiction from the 1920s to the 90s, Lisa Marie Evans and Marianne K. Martin's In Her Words: 20th Century Lesbian Fiction is an exhaustive walk through individual author's lives and works using a range of new and archival interviews. Without preamble, we are thrown into a discussion of Radclyffe Hall’s... Continue Reading →
LGBTQ+ highlights at 13th annual DOC NYC running in-person & online November 9-27
America's largest documentary festival, DOC NYC, returns with its 13th annual edition running in-person November 9th-17th at New York's IFC Center, SVA Theatre, and Cinépolis Chelsea, with over 110 feature-length documentaries among over 200 films and events, including 29 world premieres and 27 US premieres. With most films available digitally to US viewers, the festival... Continue Reading →
Outfest LA 2022 Film Review: ALL MAN The International Male Story ★★★★
Following its world premiere at Tribeca last month, directors Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed's delectable ALL MAN: The International Male Story plays the 40th Anniversary Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Film Festival on Saturday, July 16th. The feature documentary chronicles the history of the alluring men's fashion catalogue, International Male, with insights from the insiders... Continue Reading →
Sydney Film Festival 2022 Review: Fashion Babylon ★★★
Gianluca Matarrese’s Fashion Babylon is a documentary more interested in the lives on fashion’s fringes than the glamour on the runway. Following a trio of notable fashion obsessives, Matarrese’s cold lens highlights how wafer thin glamour is, and how hollow art can be… but just maybe, for a few, it is still redeemable. Musician/artist Casey... Continue Reading →