As someone who has lived in Manhattan throughout the pandemic, the black and white shots of the vacant city streets and landmarks which open David Wexler's Disintegration Loops—world premiering at SXSW Online 2021—struck me as one of the most evocative works I've seen so far that captures a sense of what being here was like... Continue Reading →
UPDATE: Charli XCX: Alone Together is on Hulu and on-demand from Friday January 28th 2022. In the early days of the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, global pop star Charli XCX announced that she would write and record an entire new album, along with creating the visuals, from self-quarantine in her home in LA, while promising... Continue Reading →
While the drag queen presidential debate challenge on RuPaul's Drag Race might seem a little far-fetched, like so much on the show it is actually a homage to real queer history. Following an earlier bid for mayor of Chicago as detailed in the film Drag in for Votes, in 1992 Joan Jett Blakk announced, "We're... Continue Reading →
UPDATE: Rebel Dykes opens in UK cinemas and is released on digital Friday November 26th 2021. Harri Shanahan and Sian Williams' feature documentary Rebel Dykes, which receives its world premiere as part of the virtual 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival running March 17th to 28th and its Australian premiere at the Melbourne Queer... Continue Reading →
Yana Ugrekhelidze's debut feature documentary Instructions for Survival opens with harrowing footage of an anti-LGBTQ mob on the streets of Georgia surrounding and attacking a minibus. The incident happened in May 2013 as a small number of LGBTQ Georgians gathered to mark the annual International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia and were met with... Continue Reading →
Over two decades after her award-winning documentary Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities premiered at the 1999 Berlinale, filmmaker Monika Treut returns to the festival to premiere Genderation, which sees her reconnecting with the pioneering trans, gender-diverse, and sex positive subjects she encountered in San Francisco in the late 90s for that film. With many... Continue Reading →
The outstanding feature documentary P.S. Burn This Letter Please, now streaming in the US on Discovery+ and premiering iun the UK at 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, uncovers the history of New York’s drag queens of the 1950s and '60s. Following the discovery of a box of old letters in a storage unit... Continue Reading →
Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer's riveting feature documentary Cured, which had its world premiere at Outfest and screens this month as part of the virtual 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, examines the fascinating chapter in queer history that saw gay liberation activists successfully overturn the US psychiatric profession's classification of homosexuality as a... Continue Reading →
Chad Hahne’s undercover documentary, Transformistas, which had its Australian premiere at Queer Screen's Mardi Gras Film Festival earlier today, offers a heart-wrenching and eye-opening window into an unexplored chapter of LGBTQ+ history. The film shines a light on Cuba’s drag community, how the HIV/AIDS crisis was handled in the republic, and Cuba's oldest gay bar.... Continue Reading →
Jonas Poher Rasmussen's remarkable Flee world premiered at Sundance 2021, winning the festival's World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. As the film opens a caption tells us that this a true story and that some of the names have been changed to protect the subjects' anonymity. In present day Copenhagen, Denmark we meet 36... Continue Reading →
