As we face an onslaught of regressive legislative attacks on LGBTQIA+ life, focused on trans rights, along with reproductive, and voting rights, book bans and restrictions on school curriculums, it can be empowering to look back at the organizing and methods of grassroots trans and queer resistance in previous decades. That was part of the... 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 →
Sundance 2023 Film Review: The Stroll ★★★★★
Directors Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker's outstanding feature The Stroll, received its world premiere in the US Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, going on the win that section's Special Jury Award for Clarity of Vision. It tells the collective history of the transgender women of colour who worked "the stroll"—a section of... 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 →
Alexis Gregory’s Riot Act returns to West End for World AIDS Day
Following a sell-out Pride 2022 date, writer and performer Alexis Gregory’s critically acclaimed Riot Act returns to the fabulous West End cabaret venue Crazy Coqs for a special performance to mark World AIDS Day on Thursday, December 1st 2022. The hard-hitting, poignant, but outrageously funny verbatim solo-show was created from Gregory’s own interviews with a Stonewall survivor (Michael-Anthony... Continue Reading →
DOC NYC 2022 Film Review: Casa Susanna ★★★ 1/2
Following its world premiere at Venice, where it was nominated for the Queer Lion, and showings at other international festivals including TIFF, and London, Sébastien Lifshitz's feature documentary Casa Susanna receives its US premiere at DOC NYC. Lifshitz continues his focus on trans lives (following Wild Side, Bambi, A French Woman and Little Girl/Petite Fille)... Continue Reading →
Film Review: My Policeman ★★★1/2
Tony and Olivier award-winning veteran theatre director Michael Grandage follows his 2016 feature film debut, Genius, with the delicately powerful My Policeman, which world premiered at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival and opens in select US cinemas today ahead of its global launch on Prime Video on November 4th. Based on the bestselling book... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: My Policeman director Michael Grandage “I was born into that world where homosexuality was still illegal in England”
Tony and Olivier award-winning veteran theatre director and producer Michael Grandage's poignant sophomore feature film, My Policeman, which received its world premiere at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival, opens in US theaters on October 21st before its global launch on Prime Video on Friday November 4th. Based on the novel by Bethan Roberts, with... Continue Reading →
NewFest 2022 Opening Night Film Review: Mama’s Boy ★★★1/2
NewFest's 34th annual New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival opened tonight with the world premiere of director Laurent Bouzereau's deeply moving and unexpectedly urgent adaptation of Oscar-winning writer and filmmaker Dustin Lance Black's 2019 best-selling memoir, Mama's Boy, which debuts on HBO and HBO Max on Tuesday, October 18th 2022. "Very soon, I promise you, you... 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 →