Soon after New York state passed a 2015 law that health insurance should cover transgender-related care and services, director Tania Cypriano and producer Michelle Hayashi began bringing their cameras behind the scenes at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where this remarkable documentary captures the emotional and physical journey of surgical transitioning. Lending equal narrative weight to the experiences of the center’s groundbreaking surgeon Dr. Jess Ting and those of his diverse group of patients, BORN TO BE perfectly balances compassionate personal storytelling and fly-on-the-wall vérité. It’s a film of astonishing access—most importantly into the lives, joys, and fears of the people at its center.
After 11 strangers unite to help a gay youth escape life-threatening violence in Uganda, the unexpected pandemic and conflicting opinions over his best interests test the limits of their commitment and jeopardize his fresh start in Canada.
For the last quarter century, Houston native Arden Eversmeyer journeyed across the country to record hundreds of oral "herstories" with a mostly invisible population that is rapidly disappearing. Old Lesbians honors Arden's legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project, from first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out, and finally from loss to connection.
In 1959, Jean Cocteau looked back on his artistic journey for the Télé Monte-Carlo television show Tout la vérité, rien que la vérité. The program ends with a tasty anecdote about television that Cocteau describes as a “box of tricks”. A few weeks later, in the same Victorine studios, Cocteau directed most of the sequences for his last opus: The Testament of Orpheus (1959).
A documentary incorporating footage of Montgomery Clift’s most memorable films; interviews with family and friends, and rare archival material stretching back to his childhood. What develops is the story of an intense young boy who yearned for stardom, achieved notable success in such classic films as From Here to Eternity and I Confess, only to be ruined by alcohol addiction and his inability to face his own fears and homosexual desires. Montgomery Clift, as this film portrays him, may not have been a happy man but he never compromised his acting talents for Hollywood.
Richard Fontaine and Bob Mizer started the current exploration of the male nude in film and photography. The two shared ideas props and models and reinvented some of the sexual icons that we all still recognise today. The gladiator the sailor, the cowboy… Starting with posing-straps and graduating to nudes their "art studies" enlisted the talents of up-and-coming actors and bodybuilders. This film recalls that era.
In 2014, Luke was a small-town boy growing up in Ohio. The only son and adopted child of a single mother, he dropped out of college and moved to New York to become a gay porn star: Levi Karter.
Robert Oppel's documentary about the life and murder of his uncle and namesake, Robert Opel, the man who streaked the Academy Awards in 1974.
Chronicles of a male homosexual drug addict in 1980's in voice-over with long take scenes from Rome, television snippets of news of Gulf War and commercials.
A young group of actors are preparing an updated version of Shakespeare's ROMEO & JULIET. Two boys perform the central roles - both of them struggling with their own questions of love alongside their roles on stage. And as rehearsals begin, reality soon starts to interfere with the play.
“This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain because he had not had the good fortune of today's gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on May 10, 1998.” Rosa von Praunheim
In late 1955 and early 1956, the citizens of Boise, Idaho believed there was a menace in their midst. On Halloween, investigators arrested three men on charges of having sex with teenage boys. The investigators claimed the arrests were just the tip of the iceberg-they said hundreds of boys were being abused as part of a child sex ring. There was no such ring, but the result was a widespread investigation which some people consider a witch hunt. By the time the investigation ended, 16 men were charged. Countless other lives were also touched.In some cases, men implicated fled the area. At least one actually left the country. The investigation attracted attention in newspapers across the nation, including Time Magazine. The "Morals Drive" left scars which remain to this day.
What happens when your child comes out to you? In this feature documentary, parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gender individuals in Turkey intimately share their experiences with the viewer, as they redefine what it means to be parents in this conservative society.
Serviced explores touch based service businesses including cuddling, erotic massage, sex surrogacy and sex work. Meet the men who have foregone the 9-5 grind or are adding on a side-hustle service-based job. From cuddling to sex work we're looking at the world's oldest profession with eyes wide open.
The shocking story of Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb, two wealthy college students who murdered a 14-year-old boy in 1924 to prove they were smart enough to get away with it.
When Sarah accidentally proposes to her girlfriend in Provincetown, the mixup turns their loving relationship into a minefield of marital exploration.
In this film, Laerte conjugates the body in the feminine, and scrutinizes concepts and prejudices. Not in search of an identity, but in search of un-identities. Laerte creates and sends creatures to face reality in the fictional world of comic strips as a vanguard of the self. And, on the streets, the one who becomes the fiction of a real character. Laerte, of all the bodies, and of none, complicates all binaries. In following Laerte, this documentary chooses to clothe the nudity beyond the skin we inhabit.
Bambi Lake, a notorious San Francisco transgender performer and entertainer, takes us on a stroll down Polk Street, sharing anecdotes and the history behind her song Golden Age of Hustlers, which was written about her time as a street hustler in the mid-70’s.
As a result of the Holocaust and later, AIDS, the male homosexual community has sustained bitter losses and, according to Praunheim, lesbian women have now placed themselves at the head of the so-called queer movement. The female protagonists in the film represent two different generations; they also incorporate the past and present status of homosexuals in society.
Personal diary-style documentary of German Gay rights activist Von Praunheim's sojourn in the US.