Actor Lydia West was already on Digital Spy's 30 Black British stars of tomorrow list and Grazia's 2021 Hotlist before last month's record-breaking UK launch of Russell T. Davies' 1980s London set drama It's A Sin on Channel 4 and its digital platform All4, where it has racked up over 16 million views and counting.... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: It’s A Sin writer Russell T. Davies “I didn’t want to write a drama about deathbeds. I wanted to reclaim that ground & remember those lives with joy”
Over the past three decades the Swansea-born multi-BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated writer Russell T. Davies has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in television. With bold, groundbreaking series like Queer As Folk, Cucumber, A Very English Scandal, and Years and Years he has entertained and provoked audiences, creating some of the most memorable queer... Continue Reading →
TV Review: It’s A Sin ★★★★★
As writer Russell T. Davies' (Queer As Folk) new 1980s London set drama series It's A Sin opens we're briskly introduced to five young characters, with a skilful immediacy that's instantly involving. Small town boy, 18 year-old Ritchie (Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander), is leaving the sleepy conservative seclusion of the Isle of Wight... Continue Reading →
NewFest 2020 Film Review: Keith Haring: Street Art Boy ★★★★
Despite its relatively short running time of just 53 minutes, or perhaps because of it, director Ben Anthony's made-for-television documentary Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, which premiered at NewFest, manages to cover a lot of ground. In fact a parallel emerges of a prolific artist with an intense creative drive, and the film's style which,... Continue Reading →
Glenn Close, Jeremy O. Harris, Brian Tyree Henry, Laura Linney & Patti Luopne to appear in The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America online benefit for amfAR’s Fund to Fight COVID-19
The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) will present The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America this Thursday October 8th at 8:30p.m. EST. on Broadway.com’s YouTube channel to benefit amfAR’s Fund to Fight COVID-19. Working with playwright Tony Kushner, director Ellie Heyman has enlisted an impressive array of performers, who filmed themselves remotely, for this... Continue Reading →
Outfest 2020 Film Review: Minyan ★★★★
A gay Brooklyn teenager (The Inheritance’s Samuel H. Levine) charts his own sexual awakening and the complexities of his Russian Jewish family in documentarian Eric Steel’s narrative debut Minyan. The work of James Baldwin is certainly in the zeitgeist again as, much like Tomasz Jedrowski's brilliant debut novel Swimming in the Dark, Giovanni’s Room provides... Continue Reading →
Forbidden Letters and Passing Strangers: The Adult Film Romances of Arthur J. Bressan Jr.
In 1977, Arthur J. Bressan Jr. was promoting his landmark documentary Gay USA (1977) on the gay-centered New York City television program Emerald City TV at the height of gay liberation. He dressed unpretentiously in blue jeans and a t-shirt with long-hair and a mustache that made him look more 1960s San Francisco Haight Ashbury... Continue Reading →
Support the Frameline 2020 Fund
Since 1977 San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival has presented LGBTQ+ cinema to a ravenous audience each year. Ravenous? Yes, I meant it. The huge crowds packed into such iconic venues as the palatial Castro Theatre love cinema so much, they'll loudly cheer on what speaks to them. Conversely, you haven't lived until 1400 people hiss... Continue Reading →
BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival 2020 Cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic
The British Film Institute has taken the difficult decision to cancel this year's LGBTQI+ Flare festival, two days before it was due to begin "due to the scale and complexity of running a large international film festival with filmmakers set to travel from across the world". In a statement released to media the BFI said,... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Sundance 2020 Interview: Buck Filmmakers Elegance Bratton & Jovan James
From Sundance 2020, The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann spoke exclusively with filmmakers Elegance Bratton and Jovan James about their beautiful short film Buck which had its world premiere at the festival on Sunday night. Partly inspired by the deaths of two young black men under suspicious circumstances in Los Angeles, Buck follows a young... Continue Reading →