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Celebrating and commemorating the history and culture surrounding sexual diversity and queer identity, featuring the Academy Award winning Common Threads and Oscar nominated How to Survive a Plague, among others.
With a fist full of credit cards & a lucky run at the track, Franco Stevens launched Curve, the best-selling lesbian magazine ever published. AHEAD OF THE CURVE is a must-see documentary for anyone hoping to understand identity politics around LGBTQ+ women in the early ’90s. Against the hostile backdrop of hate crimes and family rejection, with few celebrities or politicians willing to be out publicly, Curve magazine dared to show that lesbians, queer women, and non-binary people are fully human. Franco revisits Curve’s original mission, connecting with queer women leading today who share the belief that “true visibility looks like us being the authors of our own experience” and that “any type of visibility is radical, political.”
“The Trocks” are some of the world’s most beautiful dancers—male ballerinas who take great risks to present their dazzling ballet parody. Full of beauty and fun, “Ballerina Boys” seduces viewers into facing issues of gender, inclusion, and social justice.
Belgian choreographer Alain Platel asked a number of older drag queens and trans cabaret artists to perform onstage one last time in his piece Gardenia, which became a global success.
The film intercuts shots from Gardenia with interviews in which these performers talk about the choices they made, going against the grain of conventions in order to become themselves. The contrast between their outrageous performances and their vulnerability offers unsettling but multifaceted insight into these remarkable individuals.
FLEE tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan.
This stylish, literate, often hilarious film tells the story of Scott Symons, a larger-than-life writer who has exiled himself to a beautiful Moroccan seaside town for over 25 years. Called by Peter C. Newman “the conscience of Canadian literature”, Symons has always been too radical for his times. Some of the best known names in Canadian culture, including Patrick Watson, June Callwood and Dennis Lee, reflect movingly on a man who is obsessed with love, Canada, and the erotic possibilities of birds and furniture.
After her grandmother dies, the director finds an old photo with a writing on the back: “A week after abortion.” But she knew her grandmother could not conceive, and that was why she adopted a son, the director’s father. She then sets on a journey, knowing very little about where it would lead. At a crucial moment, she learns of her biological grandmother, an Iraqi immigrant who conceived out of wedlock. Her journey exposes a system of patriarchal oppression, leading the director to break the bond of silence that connects her grandmothers and herself.
Faced with their own mortality, an improbable group of mostly HIV-positive young men and women broke the mold as radical warriors taking on Washington and the medical establishment. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. How To Survive A Plague is the story of how activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition.
Since the 1950s, sex change operations have been available in Casablanca. These trailblazing operations were as rare as they were risky; the patients were not required to undergo any kind of psychological assessment beforehand. Filmmaker Michiel van Erp asks five pioneering trans-women (including famed British socialite April Ashley) if their experiences of womenhood matched their expectations at the time of their transition. What have their lives been like since and how did the world react to this first generation of transsexuals?
Indianara, a bigger-than-life revolutionary character and her group who lead a fight for the survival of transgender people in Brazil.
Shot during tumultuous times in Brazil while Michel Temer is president, while the Marielle Franco is killed in cold blood, Indianara is an incredible woman, a Gena Rowlands of sort who doesn’t take no for an answer. She cares about humanity and decency for all.
In the shelter she founded, in the streets and during demonstrations, she fights for her ideals, including her relationship with Maurice, her husband. Nearing fifty, facing political attacks and the advance of totalitarianism, she commits a real act of resistance.
In 2006 Jerusalem was to host the World Pride events for the first time. The planned parade ignited turmoil in the politically complex city, with Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders banding together against this apparent “threat” to “defile the holy city”. As activists from Jerusalem’s LGBT community centre face violent anti-gay sentiment, it is not only their right to march that is under threat but their very lives.
Stories of our Lives documents the hidden personal stories of lovers, fighters, rebels and the community histories that characterize the queer experience in Kenya: ASK ME NICELY (ITISHA POA), RUN, ATHMAN, DUET, EACH NIGHT I DREAM.
A behind-the-scenes look inside the historic case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The high-profile trial first makes headlines with the unlikely pairing of Ted Olson and David Boies, political foes who last faced off as opposing attorneys in Bush v. Gore.
The film also follows the plaintiffs, two gay couples who find their families at the center of the same-sex marriage controversy. Five years in the making, this is the story of how they took the first federal marriage equality lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court.
THE FIGHT is an inspiring, emotional insider look at how these important battles are fought and the legal gladiators on the front lines fighting them. Directors Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and Eli Despres capture the rollercoaster ride of the thrill and defeat in these deeply human battles. When a mother is separated from her child, a soldier is threatened to lose his career, a young woman’s right to choose is imperiled at the pleasure of a government official, and the ability to exercise our basic right to vote is threatened, the consequences can be devastating to us and to future generations. THE FIGHT celebrates the unsung heroes who fiercely work to protect our freedoms.
THE FREEDOM TO MARRY is the untold story of the most successful – and perhaps most inspiring – civil rights movement of our time. This is a riveting ride alongside Evan Wolfson, the man known as architect of the movement, and his team as they wage a decades-long battle all the way to the United States Supreme Court, providing fresh perspective on the movement’s history along the way. This is both a primer for social change and a behind-the-scenes look at how regular people can actually make a difference.
Suzan was born with both male and female sex organs. When she was 5 months old, her parents decided she would be a female. She learnt about it only at the age of 35. Ofer was born intersexual, too, but his parents decided against surgery and accepted him the way he was born. Is there a right to be an intersex? Most people don’t think so. Suzan and Ofer are on a mission to change it.
Leading up to the Olympics in Sochi, a law banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors” was passed in Russia. Gay Olympians were confronted with a tough decision: whether to protest in defense of their Russian comrades or compete in silence. Popular figure skater Johnny Weir was challenged to come out against the country he’d loved since childhood. Narrated by Jane Lynch, To Russia with Love takes viewers inside the Russian Open Games – a daring gay sports tournament held in Moscow three days after the Olympics – which was thwarted by authorities at every turn. Tennis champ Billie Jean King meets teen activist Vladislav Slavskiy who lives a besieged life in Sochi.