June 2021 14 Films to Films that matter watch during Pride Month Princess Cyd Princess Cyd follows 16-year-old athlete Cyd Loughlin (Jessie Pinnick) while visiting her novelist aunt (Rebecca Spence) in Chicago over the summer. Eager to escape life with her depressive single father, Cyd falls for a girl in the neighborhood, while she and her aunt gently challenge each other in the realms of sex and spirit. Official selection at the BFI London Film Festival. kanopy.com/video/princess-cyd Saturday Church In this New York Times Critics’ Pick, A 14 year old boy, struggling with gender identity and religion, begins to use fantasy to escape his life in the inner city and find his passion in the process. Nominated for Best Actress and Best US Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. Winner of Outstanding Actor in a Feature Film at Outfest. kanopy.com/video/saturday-church Parting Glances Heroic, funny and romantic, Parting Glances is a triumph for everyone who has ever been in love-straight or gay. The story revolves around two men, Michael and Robert, who have been lovers for years. Robert is being transferred out of the country for two years, leaving Michael behind. Their best friend Nick, who is also Michael’s former lover, is dying of AIDS. So begins a surprisingly funny, wonderfully acted love story set in the gay scene of Manhattan. Parting Glances, a pioneering film of gay cinema, is about the loyalties of friendship and the vicissitudes of romantic love. kanopy.com/video/parting-glances Films that matter Stonewall Uprising In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Such raids were not unusual in the late 1960s, an era when homosexual sex was illegal in every state but Illinois. That night, however, the street erupted into violent protests and demonstrations that lasted for the next six days. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world. kanopy.com/video/stonewall-uprising We Were Here The AIDS Years in San Francisco An intimate, yet epic history of the AIDS years in San Francisco, as told through the stories of five longtime San Franciscans. The film documents the coming of what was called the “Gay Plague” in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed. We were here offers a cathartic validation for the generation that suffered through, and responded to, the onset of AIDS. kanopy.com/video/we-were-here Political Animals Pioneering Women Who Paved the Way for LGBT Equality The winner of over ten awards including the American Library Associations Notable Video for Adults.” Political Animals tells the story of the civil rights struggle of this century - the gay rights movement - through the eyes of first four members of the LGBT Legislative Caucus: Jackie Goldberg, Christine Kehoe, Sheila Kuehl, and Carole Migden. Winner of Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival. kanopy.com/video/political-animals Films that matter The Watermelon Woman Cheryl Dunye plays a version of herself in this witty, nimble landmark of New Queer Cinema. A video store clerk and fledgling filmmaker, Cheryl becomes obsessed with the “most beautiful mammy,” a character she sees in a 1930s movie. Determined to find out who the actress she knows only as the “Watermelon Woman” was and make her the subject of a documentary, she starts researching and is bowled over to discover that not only was Fae Richards (Lisa Marie Bronson) a fellow Philadelphian but also a lesbian. Winner of Best Feature Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. kanopy.com/video/watermelon-woman Born in Flames The movie that rocked the foundations of the early Indie film world, this provocative, thrilling and still-relevant classic is a comic fantasy of female rebellion set in America ten years after the Second American Revolution. When Adelaide Norris, the black radical founder of the Woman’s Army, is mysteriously killed, a diverse coalition of women - across all lines of race, class, and sexual preference - emerges to blow the System apart. Featuring early cameos by Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Bogosian. Award-winner at the Berlin International Film Festival. kanopy.com/video/born-flames Poison This groundbreaking American Indie was the most fervently debated film of the 1990s and a trailblazing landmark of queer cinema. A work of immense visual invention, Haynes’ spectacular follow-up to his legendary “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” is audacious, disturbing and thrillingly cinematic. A runaway theatrical hit and Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner, which made national headlines and the network news when it was attacked by right-wing minister Donald Wildmon, POISON is unsettling, unforgettable and thoroughly entertaining. Winner of the Teddy for Best Feature Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. kanopy.com/video/poison-0 Films that matter The Queen Behind the Scenes of a 1967 Drag Beauty Pageant More than 40 years before RuPaul’s Drag Race, this ground-breaking documentary about the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant introduced audiences to the world of competitive drag. The film takes us backstage to kiki with the contestants as they rehearse, throw shade, and transform into their drag personas in the lead-up to the big event. Organized by LGBTQ icon and activist Flawless Sabrina, the competition boasted a star-studded panel of judges including Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, and Terry Southern. kanopy.com/video/queen-0 Funeral Parade of Roses Director Toshio Matsumoto’s shattering, kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most subversive and intoxicating films of the late 1960s: a headlong dive into a dazzling, unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, fueled by booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara. No less than Stanley Kubrick cited the film as a direct influence on his own dystopian classic A Clockwork Orange. An unknown club dancer at the time, transgender actor Peter (from Kurosawa’s Ran) gives an astonishing Edie Sedgwick/Warhol superstar-like performance as hot young thing Eddie, hostess at Bar Genet – where she’s ignited a violent love-triangle with reigning drag queen Leda (Osamu Ogasawara) for the attentions of club owner Gonda (played by Kurosawa regular Yoshio Tsuchiya, from Seven Samuri and Yojimbo). kanopy.com/video/funeral-parade-roses Strike a Pose In 1990, seven young male dancers - 6 gay, 1 straight - joined Madonna on her most controversial tour. On stage and in the iconic film Truth or Dare, they showed the world how to express yourself. Now, 25 years later, they reveal the truth about life during and after the tour, when they were ambassadors to the world on behalf of the LGBT community during the height of the AIDS epidemic. STRIKE A POSE is a dramatic tale about overcoming shame and finding the courage to be who you are. Nominated for the Panorama Audience Award and the Teddy Award for Best Documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival. Placed in the Top 20 Audience Favorites at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. kanopy.com/video/strike-pose Films that matter Tangerine Sin-Dee is back. Upon hearing that her pimp boyfriend was unfaithful during the days she was jailed, the sex worker and her friend, Alexandra, set out to get to the bottom of this. Their odyssey leads them through subcultures of Los Angeles. Official Selection at the Sundance Film Festival. kanopy.com/video/tangerine-0 Maurice Set against the stifling conformity of pre-World War I English society, Maurice is a story of coming to terms with one’s sexuality and identity in the face of disapproval and misunderstanding. Maurice Hall (James Wilby) and Clive Durham (Hugh Grant) find themselves falling in love at Cambridge. At a time when homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment, the two must keep their feelings for one another a secret. After a friend is arrested and disgraced for “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks,” Clive abandons his forbidden love and marries a young woman. Maurice, however, struggles with his identity and self-confidence, seeking the help of a hypnotist to rid himself of his undeniable urges. Nominated for Best Costume Design at the Academy Awards. Winner of Best Actor, Best Score, the Silver Lion, and nominated for the Gold Lion at Venice Film Festival. kanopy.com/video/maurice.