Following the Criterion Channel's 2021 Arthur Dong retrospective, ten films by the Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker have just been released by Kino Lorber with the three-disc Blu-ray Arthur Dong Collection, along with four hours of bonus features. The set includes Dong's first independently made and previously unavailable film, Public from 1970, in a 2K restoration... Continue Reading →
Emmys 2024 FYC Exclusive Interview: Taylor Mac on his 24-Decade History of Popular Music “so much of queer culture has been erased – I wanted to make something so big it couldn’t be ignored”
In 2016, Taylor Mac performed a one-time-only, 24-hour immersive theatrical experience in front of a live audience at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The concert offered an alternative take on U.S. history, narrated through music that was popular from the nation’s founding to the present, with Mac transforming hourly by changing into elaborate, decade-specific costumes... Continue Reading →
Sundance 2024 Film Review: Frida ★★★★
Emmy-nominated editor Carla Gutiérrez, who cut the Oscar-nominated films RBG and La Corona, as well as the LGBTQ+ documentary Pray Away, makes her directorial debut with the exquisite Frida, which premiered in the US Documentary Competition at Sundance, and went on to win the festival's Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award. The film's beautifully expressive animated opening... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2024 Review: A Portrait of Love ★★★★
It is the potent combination of small, real moments that build to make A Portrait of Love a slow-burning heartbreaker. Along the way, we are immersed in the life, love, and creative process of Australian artist Craig Ruddy, through the lens of his partner of twenty years, Roberto Meza Mont. Best known for winning Australia’s... Continue Reading →
MQFF33 Film Review: 1946 – The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture ★★★★
If you’re a queer person of faith, or have Christians in your life, then 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture is a must-see film to add to your watchlist. Filmmaker Sharon “Rocky” Roggio fascinatingly breaks down the Biblical texts often used to attack the LGBTQ+ community by digging into a fateful mistranslation back in 1946... Continue Reading →
TIFF 2023 Film Review: Summer Qamp ★★★1/2
With regressive politicians in the United States seeking to implement legislation targeting queer and especially trans youth, including bans on gender affirming health care, participation in sport, bathroom use, book bans, and even forbidding the mention of the words "gay or trans" in schools, the loud voices of bigoted adults often overpower the kids themselves.... Continue Reading →
Outfest LA 2023 Closing Night Film Review: Chasing Chasing Amy ★★★★
If you're the kind of person who reads film reviews, the chances are that there has been a time in your life when a specific movie has become an all-consuming obsession, a movie that you've returned to so frequently that it's become like an old familiar friend to take comfort in. If you're queer, trans,... 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: Little Richard I Am Everything filmmaker Lisa Cortés “it was important to give him agency to be the narrator of his journey”
Little Richard: I Am Everything, released in US theaters and on digital on Friday, April 21st, sees Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning director Lisa Cortés excavate the Black queer origins of rock 'n’ roll with Richard Penniman, aka Little Richard, as its "architect". The fascinating and often thrilling film, which world premiered in the US Documentary Competition... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Outrageous – The Queer History of Australian TV ★★★★
In the 1970s, while the rest of the world was struggling to show LGBTQ+ characters as anything other than jokes or morality tales, one country led the way with fully-fledged gay characters front and centre. Australia’s Number 96 was a sexy soap opera about the lives of people sharing an apartment building, putting sympathetic gay... Continue Reading →
