Liberty: 3 Stories about Life & Death

Dance and prostitution play the same role for Cristhian’s body. Virtuosity, desire, technique, and sex intertwine, granting coherence to a way of life that offers many answers to few questions. A leitmotiv that reconciles opposites and contradictions. Answers that are sometimes painful, like all truths.

The skateboarding community worships Brian Anderson as a god, but for many years kept his sexuality a secret from nearly everyone in his life. Our guy Reda sat down with Brian and some of his closest friends to talk about being gay in the professional skateboarding industry and why he chose now to come out.

A day that could also be a life. A young man who could also be an older woman. A nightmare that could also be a dream. In Tunisia, while it could also be somewhere else: on the border between the necessity and the fear to make a film, the necessity and the fear for the revolution, is This day won’t last a cooperation with a distance. That is how this self portrait turns into a group portrait. Clandestine, but straight from the heart: an end that could also lead to a new beginning.

In 2018, Brazil's first shelter for LGBT+ refugees opened its doors in the city of Manaus, the largest city of the state of Amazonas. This collaborative documentary film tells the story of three residents who are all trying to build a new life in this incongruous urban metropolis. A candid, and intimate insight into the many challenges faced by LGBT+ refugees.

In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.

Based on family interviews and records of his trajectory, the director André Medeiros Martins performs an analysis of his mother's life history while documenting his own journey through self-knowledge. André is an artist obsessed with sex and who tries to find the reasons for these obsessions in stories about his late mother. From the exhibition of his works and reports from family members, he creates this auto-fictional documentary.

Through a life story the film deals with issues related to human rights, such as the right to difference. The character's life is presented from others, otherness as a logic. The spectators complete the senses and gradually realize that this is a homosexual who, still in his adolescence, became a transvestite; "Amapoa" is a term that comes from Yoruba and has become transvestite slang for women. The film has a brutal ending, revealing that the character suffered a strong violence. Homophobia. The approach leads to identification with the character and allows reflections on the intolerance of today's society.

Church & State is the improbable story of a brash, inexperienced gay activist and a tiny Salt Lake City law firm that joined forces to topple Utah’s gay marriage ban. The film’s ride on the bumpy road to equality in Utah offers a glimpse at the Mormon church’s influence in state politics and the squabbles inside the gay community that nearly derailed a chance to make history. Church & State is a story of triumph, setback and a little-known lawsuit that should have failed, but instead paved the way for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized gay unions nationwide.

Never before has the extraordinary life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo been framed in relation to the full spectrum of the historical and cultural influences that shaped her. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FRIDA KAHLO explores the 20th century icon who became an international sensation in the worlds of modern art and radical politics.

Deep Brazil. Between drifting through a city in the interior of Mato Grosso on the banks of the BR-163, we follow moments of the routine of Ana Rúbia, who is preparing for the launch of the book “School Memories of Travestis”.

Mona's Candle Light was discovered among reels of film that Geoff Alexander, of the Bay Area-based Academic Film Archive of North America, bought at a flea market in an unmarked box. There are no credits, so it is impossible to determine who shot it and for what purpose. The film is 1950s footage, probably amateur, of a well know lesbian club (which had opened in the 1930s), Mona's Candle Light, and it is an invaluable document of that underground scene. (archive.org)

Two scantily clad men pose, wrestle, and jokingly try to out-flex one another in what amounts to a beauty contest of its own.

A glance at the queer universe throughout vogue battles, an emerging street subculture in which gay, transgender and other LGBTQ people take the lead. The film sheds light on the movement and on the expressiveness of the bodies, while stepping into the space of dance – from the backstage to the stage –, exalting diversity and the LgBT culture.

The story of five lesbian and gay seniors in the Northwest Florida region as they navigate coming out, identity, politics, and the challenges and victories inherent in the gay experience. The film weaves together interviews with fictionalized interludes of magical realism that capture their feelings and experiences.

A historical account of military policy regarding homosexuality during World War II. The documentary includes interviews with several homosexual WWII veterans.

Caro Comes Out is a queer torture experiment, but also a comedy, but also a short film about coming out to your entire Cuban family.

Vikken is transgender. He’s about to take hormones for the first time. He records his voice that will disappear, and summons the figures of the past from all over the world for an intimate dialogue with himself.

A short film on the first Gay Pride March in San Francisco in 1971 the year after the Stonewall Riots. This film was lost for 50 years before it was found and restored by SF Art & Film.

In the 1970s, five men struggling with being gay in their Evangelical church started a bible study to help each other leave the "homosexual lifestyle." They quickly received over 25,000 letters from people asking for help and formalized as Exodus International, the largest and most controversial conversion therapy organization in the world. But leaders struggled with a secret: their own “same-sex attractions” never went away. After years as Christian superstars in the religious right, many of these men and women have come out as LGBTQ, disavowing the very movement they helped start. Focusing on the dramatic journeys of former conversion therapy leaders, current members, and a survivor, PRAY AWAY chronicles the “ex gay" movement’s rise to power, persistent influence, and the profound harm it causes.

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.