

The Gift(2003)
Controversial documentary about gay men purposely contracting the AIDS virus.
Movie: The Gift
Top 1 Billed Cast

The Gift
HomePage
Overview
Controversial documentary about gay men purposely contracting the AIDS virus.
Release Date
2003-04-08
Average
5.444
Rating:
2.7 startsTagline
Genres
Languages:
EnglishKeywords
Recommendations Movies
6.8How to Survive a Plague(en)
A story of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time.
6.8Howard(en)
Though legendary lyricist Howard Ashman died far too young, his impact on Broadway, movies, and the culture at large were incalculable. Told entirely through rare archival footage and interviews with Ashman’s family, friends, associates, and longtime partner Bill Lauch, Howard is an intimate tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent and a rousing celebration of musical storytelling itself.
6.8Welcome to Chechnya(en)
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
7.2The Celluloid Closet(en)
Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.
6.0Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood(en)
A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
7.5The Last Repair Shop(en)
In a warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of this city.
7.2All the Beauty and the Bloodshed(en)
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
8.0Paris Is Burning(en)
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.
7.8Disclosure(en)
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
7.9John Candy: I Like Me(en)
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
7.0The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button(en)
A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.
6.1Naqoyqatsi(en)
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
7.1The Class of ‘92(en)
A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
6.6Tongues Untied(en)
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the "Institute of Snap!thology," where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap.
7.5Life Itself(en)
The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.
6.8Circus of Books(en)
For decades, a nice Jewish couple ran Circus of Books, a porn shop and epicenter for gay LA. Their director daughter documents their life and times.
7.9Live Aid(en)
Live Aid was held on 13 July 1985, simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, and the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, United States. It was one of the largest scale satellite link-ups and television broadcasts of all time: watched live by an estimated global audience of 1.9 billion, across 150 nations. "It's twelve noon in London, seven AM in Philadelphia, and around the world it's time for Live Aid...!"
7.6David Byrne's American Utopia(en)
A filmed version of David Byrne's Broadway show, a unifying musical celebration that inspires audiences to connect to each other and to the global community.
6.9Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience(en)
A celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet.
Similar Movies
2.8Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End(en)
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.
Pfui, Rosa!(de)
German iconoclast filmmaker and gay-rights activist Rosa vonPraunheim examines his own life and career in the documentary Phooey Rosa! With a quickly paced editing style, the film is a mix of personal banter, candid interviews, and clips from his filmography. It also includes footage from his early film Bed Sausage to his later work Neurosia. At the age of 60, vonPraunheim reveals intimate details about his past relationships and his childhood growing up after WWII. He also implicates some of his friends and inspirations, including Luzi Kryn and Rainer Kranach.
6.5The Circle(de)
A young teacher in Zurich in the 1950s falls in love with a transvestite star but is torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality. He joins a gay organization that is eventually seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation in Europe.
1.0Sex & Water(en)
In this experimental film, a young documentarian works on a school project about gay sex and romance, going back to the 1950s. He interviews two seniors about their past experiences, as told through flashbacks to the past.
6.7Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets(en)
A portrait of the lives of a disparate group of patrons and employees at an American watering hole today.
6.3The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin(en)
The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin celebrates one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, following his evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to reclaim their lives.
9.0A Big Gay Hairy Hit! Where the Bears Are: The Documentary(en)
This hilarious and touching documentary tells the story of how three older, gay, "bears" working in Hollywood, tired of having their gay-themed ideas rejected by the mainstream, decided to self-produce their own web series. Against all odds, the comedy featuring three bear roommates like "The Golden Girls" solving crimes a la "Murder, She Wrote," became a sensation online and one of the most successful web shows of all time. The documentary examines ageism, body-shaming, sex-positivity, the creative process and how friendship and community can ultimately create something beloved all over the world.
7.0The Tickle King(en)
Featuring new, previously unseen footage documenting the bizarre and unsettling things that happened to filmmakers David Farrier and Dylan Reeve as Tickled premiered at film festivals and theaters in 2016. Lawsuits, private investigators, disrupted screenings and surprise appearances are just part of what they encounter along the way. Amidst new threats, the duo begins to answer questions that remained once the credits rolled on Tickled, including whether the disturbing behavior they uncovered will ever come to an end.
5.4Dream Boat(de)
A cruise ship and 3,000 men – it is a universe without heteros and women that usually remains a mystery to the outside world. Once a year the Dream Boat sets sail for a cruise exclusively for gay men where most passengers are united by the wish to live life authentically as themselves in a protected place.
3.5The Carnival(es)
Since they were children, every summer they used to participate together in the traditional carnivals of their hometown. This magical celebration, transform men of the community into dionysiac figures with makeup, coloured costumes, glitter and feathers. Alcohol, friendship and parties out of control become the limelight. Boundaries get blurred with the heat of the sun at the edge of the imposing Paraná River.
3.6Everything at Once (Paco & Manolo's Gaze)(es)
Paco and Manolo are two Catalan photographers from the outskirts of Barcelona who have been working together for thirty years as if they were a single person, capturing their images in Kink magazine, a very personal photography fanzine with a homoerotic aesthetic of Mediterranean essence.
1.0It Is Not the Brazilian Homosexuals Who Are Perverse, But the Situation in Which They Live(pt)
Two queer Brazilians go skinny dipping in a lake where they talk about love, sex, colonialism and migration, on a pandemic summer afternoon in Berlin.
5.4Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema(en)
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?
3.7All Male, All Nude: Johnsons(en)
Journey into the unique world of male stripping at a small gay strip club located in America's Second Gayest City per capita in this follow up to the popular 2017 feature documentary All Male, All Nude. All Male, All Nude: Johnsons is set in Florida's newest gay strip club, Johnsons, located in Wilton Manors, Florida and new home to the creator and owner of Johnsons - Matt Colunga, an award-winning body builder, who has been in the male entertainment industry for 23 years and was introduced in the first film. From 42-year-old Matt, to 26-year-old Alexander, who spends his days dressed as Spider-Man creating early memories for children at kid parties and spends his nights stripping down to his G-String for gay men, to single fathers and young men putting themselves through college with their stripping income, to entertainers in the adult film world - the men who compose the heart of Johnsons are diverse, unique and captivating.
4.0Twisted Sex(ja)
A look at sex in Japan, that covers underground gay life, transvestites, sex change operations, tattoos, and S&M. What does it mean to live an individualistic life in the modern age? By capturing the seemingly bizarre customs of men in drag and women in men's clothing seen on the streets, and examining the world of sexual perversion in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of our homogenized modern society, we explore whether it represents the pinnacle of pleasure, or a world of endless hell.
2.8Acts of Love(en)
When his older boyfriend loses interest in him, the filmmaker relocates to Chicago and uses dating apps to cast new lovers in an amorphous project that his mother hates.
5.9I'm a Porn Star(en)
I'm a Porn Star follows the lives of guys in the neighborhood who are likely a lot more famous than you - at least on the Internet. There are an estimated 370 million pornographic websites on-line. Porn is now a thirteen BILLION dollar business. So who's doing all this moonlighting? Turns out -- probably some people you know.
4.8Race d'Ep!(fr)
"Race d’Ep!" (which literally translates to "Breed of Faggots") was made by the “father of queer theory,” Guy Hocquenghem, in collaboration with radical queer filmmaker and provocateur Lionel Soukaz. The film traces the history of modern homosexuality through the twentieth century, from early sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden to gay liberation and cruising on the streets of Paris. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Michel Foucault on the history of sexuality and reflecting the revolutionary queer activism of its day, "Race d’Ep!" is a shockingly frank, sex-filled experimental documentary about gay culture emerging from the shadows.
7.3The Times of Harvey Milk(en)
Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
1.0War Baby(en)
Meet Duewand Collier Jr.-Male, 68 years old, American Citizen, a child conceived in the backdrop of the Philippines-American Mutual Defense Treaty, born and raised with Catholic guilt. He has made peace with his past and now tells his story-a story of love.
