Ocaña: An Intermittent Portrait

A visit to the Vauxhall Tavern in London to see the drag acts.

Is Poland a homophobic country or is it only its government? Are there in Poland, as the conservative media would have you believe, "LGTBI-free zones"? To answer these questions, Jon Sistiaga takes an immersion trip through divided Poland.

The legendary British-American actress Olivia de Havilland (1916-2020), who conquered Hollywood in the thirties, challenged the film industry when, in 1943, she took on the all-powerful producer Jack Warner in court, forever changing the ruthless working conditions that restricted the essential rights and freedom of artists.

A portrait of prestigious Spanish comic illustrator Pere Joan Riera.

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.

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.

Majur is a native and gay spokesperson from the village of Pobore, on the countryside of Mato Grosso. His main activity is to be the main common link between the village people and the big town where they fight for their culture and claim for their rights.

Portrait of the last year of the life of famous New York drag queen Consuela Cosmetic.

Fragments 83 rediscovers—and repurposes—Richard Millen 1983 experimental film If You Can’t Be with the One You Love, shot in Brooklyn and the West Village in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. The resulting documentary explores the hunt for sex/love, the joy of making cinema, and the inexorable passage of time.

Portrait of comic book artist Marcel Gotlib.

Victor and Fernando are hairstylists in Mexicali. They are the go-to professionals for the city's socialites. To their customers, they were a lovely couple until they decided to legally marry. Losing the support of people and friends an confronting a blacklash of criticism, through their fight they woke up members of Mexiciali's society to fight homophobia and inequality.

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.

The journey of eight characters of different ages, regions, life trajectories and religions – and behind them, stories of overcoming difficulties, prejudice and self-acceptance, passing through themes transversal to the letters that form the acronym LGBTQIA+ – that culminate in the celebration of being able to be who you are and in the exaltation of these voices.

Ewa Hołuszko is a remarkable figure. In the 1980s she bore the male name of Marek Hołuszko, an active Solidarity movement activist. After 1989 she could not fully enjoy the regained freedom as the place of communism was taken by another enemy, more difficult to defeat, intolerance and exclusion. Gender change made her realize how far away Polish society is from full freedom. Nevertheless, she still believes that it is possible to live in a different Poland, free from stigmatization, persecution and prejudice against others.

What is the heteronorm? What is the cultural canon and how is it related to this heteronorm?

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.

From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.

Meerdolen

As thousands of athletes prepare to compete on the global stage at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Olympic gold medallist and double world champion diver Tom Daley wants to shine a light on an issue that he cares passionately about. Some competitors live in fear of horrific brutality inside the countries they represent. With punishments including whipping, life imprisonment and even death, it is illegal to be gay in over half of the 56 member states of the Commonwealth. His journey takes him to some of the Commonwealth's most homophobic countries to ask what the sporting world can do to help. The film culminates with Tom taking a very public stand at this year's opening ceremony, in a powerful statement against homophobia.