
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.
Self
Self
8.0Where 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.
6.8This 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.
6.8For 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.
6.8A 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.
6.8Though 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.
6.7Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city's upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbor. The imagery is interspersed with quotations from Walt Whitman, who is left unnamed.
7.9A documentary examining the decade of the 1970s as a turning point in American cinema. Some of today's best filmmakers interview the influential directors of that time.
7.1Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.
6.0A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
6.8Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.
6.0From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
7.8An 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.
7.9An on-the-scene documentary following the events of September 11, 2001 from an insider's view, through the lens of two French filmmakers who simply set out to make a movie about a rookie NYC fireman and ended up filming the tragic event that changed our lives forever.
6.3An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.
6.5Mark Patton sets the records straight about the controversial 1985 sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, which ended his acting career, just as it was about to begin.
7.2Exuberant, 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.
6.9An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.
7.3When Will Ferrell's good friend Harper comes out as a trans woman, they take a road trip to bond and reintroduce Harper to the country as her true self.
7.7Oprah Winfrey talks with the exonerated men once known as the Central Park Five, plus the cast and producers who tell their story in "When They See Us."
8.0London 1976: Between economic crises and the Silver Jubilee, something is brewing in the squats and basement clubs of West London: Punk. A promise, a new beginning. Punk meant self-empowerment, especially for the women in the scene. For the first time, women picked up guitar, bass and drums, formed bands and wrote their own songs.
0.0PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE looks at the war on drugs from 1968 until today and looks at trigger points in history that took cannabis from being a somewhat benign criminal activity into a self-perpetuating constantly expanding policy disaster.
8.0The only thing colder than a Canadian winter is Canadian bureaucracy (probably). Based on five real life stories, Romy Boutin St-Pierre and Joe Nadeau pay homage to the nation-wide stress headache of phone calls with the government in this surprising short.
0.0"Panic Bodies is a 70-minute, six-part exploration of the ways we experience the body's betrayals: disease, decline and death. The film is a panorama of emotionally charged recollections of strange relatives and estranged siblings, staged recreations of fast-fading pasts and personal mythologies, and reflections on the anxious states created by the body's fragile claims on time and space. It's about being a stranger in your own skin. Panic Bodies perfects the phantom quality of any good work about mourning, but it is not reducible to that. It is also enlivened by the intimacy that comes from having made a spectacle of personal secrets." (Kathleen Pirrie Adams, Xtra)
0.0Through a collection of video diary entries spanning more than a year, Pronouns in Bio delivers an offbeat and charming reflection on transness and identity. Part documentary, part video essay and part musical, the film follows director and star Lucy Rose Shaftain-Fenner, a recently out transgender, autistic woman, as she navigates the first year of her transition. Note: Lucy uses the name Frankie during the film but has since started using the name Lucy.
0.0Capturing the sights, sounds, and magic of Carlton Haney’s 1971 Labor Day Festival in Camp Springs, North Carolina; a three-day outdoor festival—the first of its kind—featuring bluegrass veterans and future stars alike sharing the primitive wood and cinder block stage. More than just capturing one of the largest bluegrass festivals of that decade, this documentary is also an interesting mixture of live performances, interviews, impromptu jam sessions and crowd footage of live music set in a small town surrounded by the now long gone red clay and tobacco shacks of North Carolina.
6.555 years ago, on October 1 1968, the first brand advertising spot appeared on the French television screen. Over the next three decades, thousands of creative little films would seduce and build our collective memory. Kitschy or cult spots, humor, slogans, music, stars, gimmicks, grand spectacle or sex appeal: during its golden age, how did advertising convince? Thierry Ardisson has brought together almost 400 advertising clips to relive the era of the conquest of minds and wallets.
6.0This documentary portrays the way in which attacks against a twisted concept of “gender ideology” in four countries are being used to gain political power by right-wing conservative politicians supported by conservatives in the Catholic and evangelical churches.
8.0A project about the architectural, cultural, and social heritage of the city of Buenos Aires. An investigation about the enigmatic "Casa del Angel", a castle that used to belong to Dr. Carlos Delcasse, and the winged figure in one of its balconies that attracted the attention of all the neighbors: the sculpture of an Angel, which disappeared after the demolition of the house.
0.0An Okinawan photographer, Mao Ishikawa was 33 years old when she crossed the ocean to Philadelphia in order to photograph the life of her friend, Myron Carr, a former US marine whom she met during his service in Okinawa in the 1970s. The subsequent photo book, “Life in Philly”, is filled with raw and vivid images, capturing the atmosphere and the culture of the predominantly African American neighborhood of downtown Philadelphia in the late 80s. This film looks back on those days, bringing Myron to remembrance as Mao and his surviving family try to find the missing pieces.
7.4What if French Rock were born with Edith Piaf? From sweet sixties pop to today's gender-indifferent anthems, from feminist rebels of the seventies to fashion icons of the social media age, from Françoise Hardy to Christine & The Queens, via Vanessa Paradis, Catherine Ringer, Charlotte Gainsbourg and many more, Oh Les Filles! tells the untold story of French female rock stars. Narrated by Clémence Poésy, this groundbreaking documentary combines interviews and iconic footage to radically reverse perspectives and give the patriarchy a kick!
4.0It's hard to define her. And that's precisely the way Lady Gaga wants it. Yes, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta had a plan to remake herself into an outrageous icon. It began with Italian Catholic New York City roots then expanded to glam pop, electronic rock, burlesque and even jazz alongside nonagenarian crooner, Tony Bennett. Piano lessons began at age four and taught Stefani to create music by ear. There were lead roles in high school standard Broadway show productions then open mic nights at downtown clubs and 1 1/2 years of formal training at N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts. Even a rape at age nineteen slowed but did not stop the mission that would yield over 200 million combined album and song sales. No wonder that Gaga's fans call her "Monster Mother." An outrageous fashion sense has wrought costumes made of plastic bubbles and raw meat. While elaborate videos and spectacular stage sets are the norm,
7.1Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
5.1Any given Sunday of 1974 in Spain, soccer games in several stadiums, the sarcastic voice of commentators, the inevitable presence of advertising. Goal! The victors and the defeated.
6.4Rocky IV is dually symbolic - it embodies both the victory of the American boxer over the Soviet one and the victory of neo-liberalism over a dwindling socialism. Today, Rocky is held up as a model by some and is a subject of derision for others. An emblem of the 1980s, its culture and its heroes, the film will be the subject of an entertaining analysis of popular culture.
6.0A look at the world of US writer Paul Auster, on the occasion of the publication of his new novel, an exploration of human identity and the soul of New York, the city that Auster has portrayed as no one else has ever done.
5.4Violeta leads a normal life in a well-off family, with loving parents, surrounded by everything the heart of an eleven-year-old girl might wish for. But she hasn’t always been the pretty girl she is today; she was born a boy. At age 6, she baffled her parents (the famous adult movie stars Nacho Vidal and Franceska Jaimes) when she told them she wanted to be called and dress as a girl. After the initial shock, they decided to give her all their support on the long and tough road that will lead to her becoming a woman someday. Violeta faces many challenges, medical (such as deciding whether or not to take hormone-blockers to stop the development of masculine features as soon as puberty kicks in) and legal (obtaining an ID card with her new name and gender). Later, she may consider getting a sex reassignment procedure, or the possibility of becoming a mother through adoption.
0.0From the inner workings of the RAF. Former RAF-member Peter-Jürgen Boock reveal the many secrets and myths about the Baader-Meinhof gang a.k.a. RAF - Rote Armee Fraktion.
The first feature-length documentary that fully explores how the toxic social and political Canadian context after 1968 created some of the most nihilistic and imaginative Canadian cult films of the 1970s and 80s and beyond.
1.0Narrated 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.