6/23/2023 0 Comments Harry potter train bookends![]() ![]() Set around a birthday party, it’s one of the first features to deal with gay life on its own terms, including copious boozing, relationship strains and lacerating recriminations. MSĬast: Kenneth Nelson, Peter White, Leonard FreyĪ decade before he sparked outrage with Cruising, the thriller in which Al Pacino goes undercover in a gay leather bar to hunt down a serial killer, director William Friedkin presented this portrait of a group of New York friends on the cusp of liberation. In totality, the film balances the gravity of the moment with such lively dialogue and naturalistic performances that when the tears do come, they feel hard-earned – and painfully real. It is also tender, focusing on the budding romance between two protesters, handsome newcomer Nathan (Valois) and the more militant Sean (Pérez Biscayart). It’d be unfair to call 120 Beats Per Minute simply an ‘angry’ movie, though. He sets his film among a collection of activists, and the movie is charged by moments of both heated conversation and intense confrontation. In the ‘90s, Campillo was a fervent member of the Paris branch of ACT UP, an advocacy group pushing back against the French government’s slow response to the AIDS crisis. ![]() Director Robin Campillo takes a different approach with this forceful docudrama. When movies address the AIDS epidemic, the tone is typically weepy and melodramatic, emphasising the tragedy of watching a plague descend on an already marginalised group rather than condemning the forces that essentially sat back and let it happen. Debate and controversy still surround the film - some subjects accused Livingston of underpaying them for their participation, for one - but it remains a vital and uncommonly empathetic work.Ĭast: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adèle Haenel At the time, simply allowing the gay community to tell their own stories, in their own words, was a radical act, and Livingston gave her subjects space to discuss the pleasure and pain of queer existence with unvarnished honesty. But it’s the conversations that truly make Paris Is Burning an LGBTQ landmark. The performances are wild, expressive and still a joy to behold, even after 14 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, which owes the film a great debt for paving the way toward the mainstreaming of drag culture. The same year Madonna lifted the concept of ‘voguing’ out of New York’s queer underground and took it to the top of the charts, film student Jennie Livingston brought a camera into that same world and allowed its stars to dance, sashay and, most crucially, speak for themselves. □ The 100 best romantic films of all-timeĬast: André Christian, Dorian Corey, Paris Duprée Written by Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Guy Lodge, Ben Walters and Matthew Singer. To that end, we enlisted some LGBTQ+ cultural pioneers, as well as Time Out writers to assist in assembling a list of the greatest gay films ever made. But the strides of the last half-century or so deserve to be celebrated. Obviously, there are still many barriers left to breach, both in Hollywood and society at large. Last year saw the release of Billy Eichner’s Bros, the first romantic comedy penned by an openly gay man for a major studio, while the great Billy Porter also made his directorial debut with Anything’s Possible, a teen romance involving a trans high school student. Additionally, more and more opportunities are opening up for queer performers and filmmakers to tell their own stories. In just the last few decades, though, a gradual evolution has taken place, widening the scope of LGBTQ+ experiences on film to include those involving the trans community and people of colour. In the past, if gay lives and issues were ever portrayed at all on screen, it was typically from the perspective of white, cisgendered men. Queer culture is not a monolith, and neither is queer cinema. ![]()
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