Movies: Gay history

On March 7, 1967, 40 million Americans tuned in to watch CBS Reports: The Homosexuals, network television’s first documentary on homosexuality. Near the top of the program, host and interviewer Mike Wallace calls homosexuals “the most despised minori...

Documentary celebrating the LGBTQ contribution to the arts in Britain in the 50 years since decriminalisation. It features interviews with leading figures from right across the arts in Britain, including Stephen Fry, David Hockney, Sir Antony Sher, A...

In this docudrama Rosa von Praunheim looks into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sexual orientation, especially into his erotic experiences during his travels in Italy. Contrary to the common belief, von Praunheim argues that Goethe was not a heartbreake...

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 pharma...

Harlem, 1926. A “sweetman” Zeddy, living off a woman, brings a country girl he’s trying to impress to a gay-owned cabaret. There he meets a friend, Jake, whose girlfriend, Congo Rose, is the singer there. Drama swirls around the characters as Zeddy c...

The voices of five gay men who cruised for sex at the World Trade Center in the 1980s and 1990s haunt the sanitized, commerce-driven landscape that is the newly rebuilt Freedom Tower campus....

Russian independent short film, which studies homosexual nature of friendship. Chance meeting of schoolmates appears being metaphysical journey into depths of human subconscious in this experimental piece of art, filled with references to classic cin...

Many members of the Dutch Underground were gay and lesbian. This film pays homage to them and recounts their story....

Throughout the 1960's, gay bars served as havens for a marginalized queer community across the country. Frequent police raids and laws dictating women to wear three pieces of 'gender appropriate clothing' resulted in countless cases of police harassm...

Cherry Grove (Fire Island, NY) is the first openly LGBTQ community in the United States. One of the most accepting resort communities in the world, it is a place where everyone can discover who they really and enjoy being a free spirit....

Quearborn & Perversion: An Early History of Lesbian & Gay Chicago (2009, 109 min) is a documentary on LGBTQ life in Chicago from 1934 to 1974. Moving from the speakeasys and Henry Gerber’s founding of the Society for Human Rights in the 1930s, to the...

A closeted teenage gay boy shares a swim and an afternoon together with his straight best friend. When his looks and longing let his secret out, his friend pleasantly surprises him but an accident occurs and tragedy ensues....

Focusing on the contemporary religious Right Wing proliferation of curative therapies for homosexuality, this riveting documentary offers historical context as well as a political analysis of this frighteningly large movement....

“Meet Me by the Magnolia Tree” is a student documentary on the history of Richmond’s gay community and the role cruising for sex played in places like Byrd Park, the Block, and Battle Abbey....

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 init...

A drama about the persecution of gay men during Fascism, which for the first time reconstructs cases of their confinement in prison camps....

A varied history of gay people and Scotland....

A crumbling pier, its walls covered with graffiti and erotic frescoes reminiscent of pagan Pompeii, the locus of the seduction rituals of men longing for men, is the focus of this meditation on gay cruising at the height of sexual freedom before AIDS...

A love letter to early ’90s cruising in NYC....