In 2008, 24 year old Ryan Sullivan set out from his Nebraska hometown with Hollywood aspirations. Instead he found himself in San Francisco, "the cool gray city of love," making a documentary about a porn company.
Self (voice)
Self
A chronological look at films by, for, or about gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain". Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, documentaries and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?
Solos portrays a diversity of characters expressing themselves sexually. They speak about their fetishes, connection and fantasies. Underwear, leather, rubber, jeans, socks, boots, big penises, tattoos, hairy, extended ejaculations, ropes, childhood memories and more. Some take this opportunity to express their exhibitionism on camera going all the way from unzipping to cumming.
It was 24 hours with him. I saw him shake his ass with a friend. Scrubbing tile corners. Have egg salad for lunch. Buy cleaning products. Rehearse in the studio. Playing with children on the grass. In a huge theatre, review texts about scenes of decolonization. Smoke one, or two. Problematizing on the bus. Undressing on the couch in my house. Sleeping without fitting into the bed because you are too tall. I saw the sun bursting on your skin in the morning and said goodbye. I thought a standard session wouldn't encompass the complexity of an intimate recording. So I was his voyeur for 24 hours. Uninterrupted.
This is one of the most lavishly produced erotic gay videos ever made. Featuring eight of Britain's sexiest guys, "Better Gay Sex" illustrates the beauty, passion and sensuality of man on man sex. Experience the spectrum of gay sex as out gorgeous guys take you through the best their bodies (and yours) have to offer. Amazing sex is all about having the most wonderful mind blowing fun. Sex gives you a more confident outlook on the whole of you life. This video won't just turn you on with its explicit red hot imagery, it'll show you how to really enjoy one of the most important aspects of your life — SEX!!!
Narrated by Linda Hunt, this documentary examines the life of the late author and gay rights activist Paul Monette. Born in 1945 to a well-off Massachusetts family, Monette grows up unable to accept his homosexuality, for years hiding it from his loved ones while struggling to develop as a writer. In 1978, Monette publishes his first novel, which allows him to come out to his parents. After losing one lover to AIDS in 1986, he becomes a ferocious advocate for awareness of the disease.
This film from acclaimed theater director Lonny Price charts the journey of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along" in the 30-plus years since the musical debuted on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre in 1981.
A set of seven portraits consisting of personal accounts from the lives of gays and lesbians. The narration includes stories about coming out, bashing, cross-dressing and AIDS.
Eulália, a conservative Portuguese mother, found out that her son who emigrated to Germany has become Fostter Riviera, the internationally awarded first Portuguese gay porn actor. She suffers with the distance, sometimes toned down through the computer that has become her main source of information and communication with her son. This documentary focuses on the long journey of this mother towards acceptance and endeavour to get closer to her son.
Four charming and articulate Filipino men illuminate some issues and concerns as gay people of color in San Francisco in this early depiction of coming out stories. These brave men share personal perspectives on family, cultural heritage and racial stereotyping.
Documentary about the fight for LGBTQ-rights in Sweden during the 1970s.
A history of the anglo-saxon gay and lesbian movement scored to the liberating popular tunes of the last 25 years. Moving from the initial struggle for gay law reform, to the revolutionary politics spurned by Stonewall to the homophobic policies initiated under Thatcher and the New Right, this film is a celebration of the achievements and struggles of gay and lesbian activists. Funny, inspiring and bound to get your feet tapping “The Gay Rock and Roll Years” is a great introduction to queer history. Songs featured include Doris Day singing “Secret Love”, The Kinks doing “Lola”, Sylvester singing “You Make Me feel (Mighty Real) and Culture Club asking “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”. From rockabilly to soul to glam to disco to punk to house: we’re gay, we’re proud, we don’t ever stop the dance.
Eccomi ... Eccoti unfolds as a virtual road trip navigating between Italy and Lebanon. Conditioned to live in a long-distance relationship with his partner because of strict European visa regulations, the director patches together the shared moments in an attempt to create a possible day-to-day reality for their couple. With a lyrical, ambient soundscape set atop a dreamy, atmospheric visual style that oscillates between still photography and moving images, the film explores what it means to be gay in contemporary Beirut and existential discomfort that blocks one from reaching a sense of complete-ness. Does such in-completeness have to do, in particular, with being gay? Or is it related to a grander malaise endemic to the human condition?
Kenedi is in a huge debt after building a house for his family. He finds himself searching for any kind of work to support himself, for as little as 10 EUR per day, a scarce amount to help him relief his debt. Ultimately, Kenedi decides to look for money in sex business. Initially offering his services to older ladies and widows, he expands his 'business' to offer sex to wealthy men. When he finds out about new liberal European laws on gay marriages, Kenedi sees prospects in looking for a "marriage material", to renew his search for a legal status in EU. The opportunity arises during EXIT Music Festival, when he meets Max, a guy from Munich. But will their promising relationship bring the solution to Kenedi's problems?
Can we reinvent our lost queer histories? #Familiar #Touch #Lost #Figures is about queer ancestry and diaspora, a hybrid of cultural traditions and contemporary queer identity. It explores feelings of guilt and joy, and intimacy between femmes of colour.
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.
A powerful and poetic short film that tells the little known history of Italian gay men being arrested and exiled to a remote island during Mussolini’s Fascist regime.
A historical account of military policy regarding homosexuality during World War II. The documentary includes interviews with several homosexual WWII veterans.
Documentary about men who break the silence about their homosexuality. They talk about their difficulty to accept and to make others accept their difference, of the place of sensuality in their lives, of their fierce desire to love freely. A film that ,in celebrating the love of a young couple, proposes to break the sometimes negative image around the gay world.
The Robert Mapplethorpe documentary, from 1988--one year before he died--is an excellent examination of one of the most controversial of American photographers. British documentarian Nigel Finch does an outstanding job fusing interviews with Mr. Mapplethorpe himself, with critic and author Edmund White, and with several of Mapplethorpe's subjects as well, with numerous shots of the man's work. Mapplethorpe, gay, did not hesitate to photograph what he wanted to without fear of reprisal or censorship. Indeed, a good number of his pieces were not shown in the documentary at its original airing on PBS with the comment, "Considered Unsuitable for Viewing On This Transmission." His openly sexual work can at times be more than shocking, but it is always powerful and direct; as critic Lynn Davies says in the documentary, he did not pose people but photographed them doing what they would normally do in the course of their lives.