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Underappreciated Queer
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Movie: The Nomi Song ( 2005 )
Having failed to break into professional opera in his native Germany (where, as an usher in West Berlin's Deutsche Oper, he would serenade the staff after the 'real' performances were over) the diminutive Klaus Nomi headed for NYC in 1972. The vibrant New Wave/avant-garde gestalt of the mid/late '70's East Village proved to be fertile ground for the development of his unique talents. Working by day as a high-end pastry chef, Nomi began to stage his outlandish performances, first launching himself upon an unsuspecting public at the New Wave Vaudeville in 1978. The hip and cynical young audience was stunned by this weird combination of falsetto arias, booming classical orchestration, Kraftwerk-style electronica, futuristic costumes and outer space imagery. An odd assortment of artists, choreographers, designers, songwriters and musicians jumped on to the Nomi bandwagon and the phenomenon began to take off - first attracting thousands to South Manhattan events (including performances at the legendary Max's Kansas City) and culminating in a recording contract with the French division of RCA. With the release 'Klaus Nomi' in 1981 and 'Simple Man' in 1982, it looked as if Nomi was on the verge of superstardom. Having established himself in Europe, he made a triumphant return to New York City. But Nomi's moment of glory proved to be his swansong. Within only a few months Nomi had succumbed to the ravages of AIDS. One of the first celebrities to be killed by this mysterious new disease, Nomi died a lonely death, largely abandoned by those who had seen him as a passport to their own success. Today, the otherworldliness of 'The Cold Song' and 'Dido's Lament' is like an ethereal voice calling from beyond the grave.
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Movie: Jobriath A.D. ( 2012 )
Called "The American Bowie," "The True Fairy of Rock & Roll" and "Hype of the Year," Jobriath's reign as the first openly gay rock star was brief and over by 1975. Now, 35 years later, "Jobriath A.D." spotlights his life, music, groundbreaking influence and the new generations of fans slowly re-discovering him.
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Movie: Funeral Parade of Roses ( 1970 )
While dealing drugs on the side, Gonda operates the Genet, a gay bar in Tokyo where he has hired a stable of transvestites to service the customers. The madame or lead "girl" of the bar is Leda, an older, old fashioned geisha-styled transvestite with who Gonda lives and is in a relationship. Arguably, the most popular of the girls working at the bar now is Eddie, a younger, modern transvestite. Like Leda, Eddie lives openly as a woman. Eddie's troubled life includes her father having deserted the family when she was a child, and having had a difficult relationship with her mother following, she who mocked Eddie's ability to be the man the of the family. Gonda enters into a sexual relationship with Eddie, who he promises to make madame of the bar, replacing Leda in both facets of his life, with Eddie having threatened to quit otherwise. While Leda suspects what Gonda and Eddie are up to, Gonda tells Leda what she wants to hear, much as he tells Eddie what she wants to hear. As this triangle plays itself out, what actually happens is affected by a joint history between Gonda and Eddie of which they are unaware. This film teeters between fiction and non-fiction as a secondary story is Eddie's friendship with a group of counter-culturalists, including filmmaker Guevara, whose making of a movie mirrors the making of this film. That balance tips into non-fiction as the actual actors in this and Guevara's movie talk about issues covered in this film, such as drug use, and sexuality, especially transvestism as the transvestite characters are played by real life transvestites.
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Movie: Michael ( 1924 )
Triangle story: painter, his young male model, unscrupulous princess.
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Movie: How to Make a Dead Man Float ( 2018 )
Pablo works in an old hospital in the city of Córdoba. Jesi is stepping into argentine ground for the first time since she moved to Europe. After years of silence and distance, they'll look at each other's eyes again. But there's someone else between them, someone who floods it all.
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Movie: I Hate New York ( 2020 )
From the underground scene of the most radical and fascinating city in the world comes the revolutionary story of four transgender activists, their fierce struggle and emotional fight to create an identity of their own.
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Movie: Greta ( 2019 )
Pedro, a 70-year-old gay nurse, is taking care of Daniela, his ailing transgender friend. In order to find her a vacant hospital bed, he decides to help an arrested and wounded criminal to escape.
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Movie: Pariah ( 2011 )
A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
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Movie: Thelma ( 2017 )
Having just enrolled at a university in Oslo against her stern parents' will, the sheltered Biology freshman and devout Christian, Thelma, leaves for the first time the isolated Norwegian countryside, to start a new life away from home. Tangibly lonely, a casual conversation and one unexpected friendship with the beautiful fellow student, Anja, will broaden Thelma's hazy horizons; however, as the glacially alluring misfit wrestles with an onslaught of novel feelings, little by little, an unprecedented psychosomatic manifestation of repressed emotions start to take over. Indeed, a mystery cloaks soft-spoken Thelma's past, and the more she struggles to renounce her nebulous desire, the more violent becomes her quivering awakening. Can Thelma unearth a denied truth behind the stinging temptation?
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Movie: Modesty and Shame ( 1992 )
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Movie: The Wounded Man ( 1985 )
A young man discovers his homosexuality and begins a relationship with a manipulative huster/petty criminal that he meets at a train station.
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Movie: Bayou Maharajah ( 2016 )
Bayou Maharajah explores the life and music of New Orleans piano legend James Booker, the man Dr. John described as "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced." A brilliant pianist, his eccentricities and showmanship belied a life of struggle, prejudice, and isolation. Illustrated with never-before-seen concert footage, rare personal photos and exclusive interviews, the film paints a portrait of this overlooked genius.
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Movie: The Dying Gaul ( 2005 )
A grief-stricken screenwriter unknowingly enters a three-way relationship with a woman and her film executive husband - to chilling results.
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Movie: Memories of My Body ( 2019 )
In Center Java Juno, a pre-teen abandoned by his father, joins a Lengger dance centre where men assume feminine appearances but the political and social upheaval in Indonesia forces him on the road, meeting remarkable people on his journey.
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Movie: Forever's Gonna Start Tonight ( 2009 )
The film profiles Vicki Marlane, a 76-year old HIV+, transgender drag entertainer who's been performing for over 50 years. It chronicles Vicki's life from Minnesota farm boy to carnival worker to gay icon.
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Movie: Portrait of Jason ( 1967 )
The highlights of a 12-hour interview with Aaron Payne, alias Jason Holliday, a former houseboy, would-be cabaret performer, and self-proclaimed hustler who, while drinking and smoking cigarettes and pot, tells stories and observations of what it was like to be black and gay in 1960s America.
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Movie: Born in Flames ( 1983 )
Set ten years after the most peaceful revolution in United States history, it presents a dystopia in which the issues of many groups - minorities, liberals, gay rights organizations, feminists - are dealt with by the government.
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Movie: Soldiers. Story from Ferentari ( 2018 )
Adi (40), a shy and introverted anthropologist who got recently dumped by his girlfriend, moves to Ferentari, most notorious outcasted neighborhood in Bucharest. He wants to write a study on manele music. The pop music of the Roma community serves as a way out for some, but mostly as one more means for the mafia pimps to make money off their acts and keep them in slave-like dependency. While researching his subject, Adi meets Alberto, a Roma ex-convict and a bear of a man, who promises Adi to help him. Soon, the unlikely pair begins a playful romance in which Adi feeds Alberto with improbable plans of escaping poverty and Alberto reciprocates with well-concocted phrases of love. Little by little their casual affair grows into love. And the funny and sweet teasing turns into something precarious, since Alberto is both dangerous and fragile and belongs to a world whose codes Adi doesn't understand.
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Movie: Unforgivable (Short 2020) ( 2020 )
A ruthless hitman for the 18th Street gang deals with his sexuality inside an evangelical Salvadoran prison, where he is not just guilty of crimes, but of an unforgivable sin under God and gang: being gay.
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Movie: Lemebel ( 2019 )
Writer, Visual Artist and pioneer of the Queer movement in Latin America, Pedro Lemebel shook up conservative Chilean society during Pinochet's dictatorship in the 1980s. Body, blood and fire were protagonists in his work that he attempted to perpetuate in the last eight years of his life in a film he was never able to see finished. In an intimate and poetic journey through his risky performances dealing with homosexuality and human rights, "Lemebel" portrays a culmination of yearning immortality.
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Movie: The Laramie Project ( 2002 )
The true story of an American town in the wake of the murder of Matthew Shepard.
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Movie: These C*cksucking Tears ( 2016 )
The man behind the world's first and only gay-themed country music album, 40 years after its release.
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Movie: Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell ( 2008 )
A portrait, mostly chronological, of composer, cellist, and vocalist Arthur Russell (1951-1992). His parents, friends and colleagues such as Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass, his long-time companion Tom Lee, and others provide commentary. Arthur is shy, acne-scarred, from the prairie, constantly composing, and not always finishing works. After a few years in San Francisco, he settles in New York City and becomes music director at the Kitchen. He bridges pop and classical, records disco music with Lola Blank, has an unsuccessful collaboration with Robert Wilson, and is part of several bands. In archival clips, we see him perform. He leaves hundreds of tapes and other recordings.
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Movie: Tropical Malady ( 2004 )
'Tropical Malady' explores the passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.
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Movie: Winter Journey ( 2014 )
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Movie: The Commitment ( 2015 )
A gay couple, who resolve to stay together, is challenged as they attend a wedding.
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Movie: August Without Him ( 2006 )
The film follows Hirata Yutaka, the first openly gay AIDS sufferer in Japan. Filmed over a series of months, it contrasts his public life as an outspoken figure on the lecture circuit with his personal descent into illness and death.