Self

In 1995, Kelli Peterson started a gay and straight club at her Salt Lake City high school. The story of her ensuing battle with school authorities in interspersed with looks back at the diary of Michael Wigglesworth, a 17th-century Puritan cleric, at the 30-year love affair of Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Adams Fields, at Henry Gerber's attempt after World War I to establish a gay-rights organization, at Bayard Rustin's role in the civil rights movement, and at Barbara Gittings' taking on of the American Psychiatric Association's position that homosexuality is illness. One person comments, "To create a place for ourselves in the present, we have to find ourselves in the past."
1998-07-31
0.833
0.0This film weaves across sound, image, time, rhythm and place and is made up of a number of layers both sound and visual layered on top of one another, talking to and informing each other. It is made using digital transfer versions of c90 tape compilations I made between 1992-1995, juxtaposed with moving image footage of me in 2018 and 2020 and a typeface font graphic ‘See Me’ that I designed in 2005. The c90 cassette on screen is the cassette compilation that I still have from 1994. The film also includes drawings and photographs and other artworks from my personal archive as an artist from the last 25 years. As I walk down the streets that were so important in shaping my life as a young gay man living in London, I revisit the gay bars and pubs that have been my safe spaces for the last twenty years and more, spaces that are now closed.
1.0The Bruce McArthur serial killer case shocked Canada’s largest city, and the whole country, when he was convicted of eight grisly murders. How did McArthur avoid arrest for nearly a decade? This film explores the untold story of Toronto’s Gay Village, and the victims of these horrific crimes.
6.0A look beyond the shock and inhumanity of prison rape to the intricate social hierarchy that keeps it alive. A filmmaker goes deep inside Alabama's infamous Limestone penitentiary to uncover the long-term causes and consequences of prison rape. With a startling lack of inhibition, five inmates reveal the workings of an elaborate inner society.
0.0The Weight of Sight is a playful and very personal essay where director Truls Krane Meby, through a massive archive of his own material - anything from DV-tapes to 35mm - explores the last 20 years of digital development - how it’s influenced the images we make, and our bodies. What kind of images do we get of the world now that everyone is a photographer, and what does it do with how we unfold our identities? How has the internet both captured and freed us? And will Truls even dare to show this film?
4.2Faith, love and civil rights collide on voting day in a small Southern town that hosts a famous performance of the last days of Christ and an infamous gospel drag show.
4.9Sex Positive explores the life of Richard Berkowitz, a revolutionary gay S&M hustler turned AIDS activist in the 1980s, whose incomparable contribution to the invention of safe sex has never been aptly credited. Mr. Berkowitz emerged from the epicenter of the epidemic demanding a solution to the problem before the outside world would take heed. Now destitute and alone, Mr. Berkowitz tells his story to a world who never wanted to listen.
2.8The story of the HOIST, London's first and only Gay Fetish Bar, coincides with the political struggle to decriminalize homosexual activity within the United Kingdom.
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.
1.0The Other Side of AIDS takes us behind the hype and headlines and into the heart of a brewing controversy over the cause and treatment of AIDS. Through candid interviews with doctors and scientists representing both sides of the issue and HIV positives on and off the drugs, the film opens minds and much-needed dialogue. Informative without being instructive, it raises fundamental questions about what we think we know. Its surprising and sometimes shocking revelations inspire us to take a closer look at HIV and AIDS and the systems that support our current views.
3.9Sr. Raposo is a staged documentary about the daily life of Acácio, who found out he was HIV+ in 1995.
7.2An emotional look at the struggle for marriage equality in Ireland.
2.7Fumi and Kazu have a lot to teach us about love. When they decide to stick their necks out and create the first LGBTQ+ law firm in Japan, they are drawn into the lives of people searching for protection and support. Despite their own relationship having no legal status, they work pro-bono for long hours, all the while foster-parenting a teenager. We meet with a colourful cast of misfits, dissidents and artists – from a delightful eccentric being prosecuted for her kitschy vagina sculptures, to a troubled outsider who, as the child of an ‘immoral woman’, has no legal identity. A saying is repeated throughout the film, that one must ‘read the air’ – conform to the tacit conservatism that forbids sexual diversity. With love, humour and serious legal chops, Fumi and Kazu do exactly the opposite.
1.0LGBT people who fought the earliest battles for equality now face so much fear about discrimination, or worse, in health care/long-term care that they hide their past lives, are afraid to ask for help, and die earlier. But, a small group of professionals is trying to change that.
0.0A 2002 interview with John Vaccaro, founder of the Playhouse of the Ridiculous, recalling the actors’ walkout during rehearsals of The Conquest of the Universe, and his friendship with Charles Ludlam. The Theater of the Ridiculous was a radical theater genre that embodied queer, the word and the act, and set the embers of Gay Liberation aflame.
6.0The story of community in the Deep South that is forced to deal with the struggles of ignorance, hypocrisy and oppression.
5.1Paid 50 dollars for their time, 101 male prostitutes -- spanning all ages, ethnicities, and personal backgrounds -- are questioned by the filmmakers about their lives.
6.5During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.
8.0Peaches - artist, feminist, rock star. She has been challenging gender stereotypes for over 20 years and is on par with the icons of the pop and rock world. With exclusive private archive material and current footage of preparations and concerts of her 2022 jubilee tour “20 Years of Teaches of Peaches”, we learn how the Canadian Merrill Nisker became the internationally celebrated musician and electro-clash icon Peaches.
0.0A short film that deals with the social and historical importance of Rainbowfest for Juiz de Fora, exploring the first edition held after the death of one of its founders, Marcos Trajano.