Queer Cinema(s)

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Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures is the first definitive, feature length portrait of the controversial American artist Robert Mapplethorpe since his death from AIDS in 1989. The one thing more outrageous than Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs was his life. Intimate revelations from family, friends and lovers are topped only by Mapplethorpe’s candor, revealed in a series of rediscovered, never before heard interviews, made public here for the first time. This is the unique portrait of an artist who turned photography into contemporary fine art with a bold vision that ignited a culture war still raging to this day.Read More »

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Disillusioned with his life in Paris, Pierre Tomas drops everything to travel through France. Via phone numbers written in bathroom stalls, coincidental rendezvous, and Grindr, a smartphone app, Pierre never ceases to find a parking spot for the car he so dearly maneuvers. As he wanders the country for four days and four nights, his lover, Paul, will try to find him, using the same app that compasses Pierre. In a game of absurdist cat and mouse, these two lovers try, in their own ways, to find their way back to one another.Read More »

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In a picturesque country house in Buenos Aires, Fernando gathers his mates for a boys-only vacation. Free from work, responsibilities and their girlfriends, this close-knit gang of bros kick back by the pool, sunning their impeccably toned bodies and sharing pot-fuelled stories of sexual conquests. The guys have known each other for years, only this time Fernando has brought with him newcomer Germán, a friend from his taekwondo class, who neglects to tell the group that he’s gay. As the lazy summer days disappear, the connection between Fernando and Germán grows and slowly the boundaries of their relationship begin to blur. A veritable masterclass in will-they-won’t-they suspense, this gloriously protracted, beautifully nuanced tease is both wantonly titillating and disarmingly sweet. Working with co-director Martín Farina, Marco Berger’s inquisitive camera luxuriates in the homoerotics of this male-centric milieu, lingering longingly over the semi-clad bodies with unapologetic gay abandon.Read More »

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Gritty journey through the sexual underbelly of Buenos Aires, with graphic depictions of the highs and lows in one man’s quest for intimacy.

The story tells, from an accentuated hyper-realistic aesthetic, the life of Martin, a man in his forties who is desperately lonely and seeks, through sex, some company, to spend that time of which nothing seems to be expected. Under this constant desolation, he finds in cocaine, alcohol and in some other orgy a state of momentary pleasure every night.Read More »

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Carrington is the true story of the tragic relationship between the English painter Dora Carrington and writer, Lytton Strachey. Between the First World War and the early 1930’s, they experimented with a way of life beyond the conventional standards of their time, a life which broke all the taboos of society of their desire to live as freely and honestly as they could. They acknowledged openly what most of us are aware of but still reluctant to discuss: that a great many differences can exist between spiritual love and physical desire.Read More »

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First feature film directed by Alex Anwandter and based on a true story.

You’ll never be alone tells the story of Juan, a withdrawn manager at a mannequin factory who after his teenage gay son suffers a violent attack, struggles between paying his son’s exorbitant medical bills and his last attempt at becoming partners with his boss. As he runs into dead-ends and unexpected betrayals, he’ll discover the world he knew was already waiting to be violent with him too.

Teddy special jury prize ensures “Alone” has embraced by the queer film circuit to critical acclaim.Read More »

A 1980 psychological thriller film directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino. The film is loosely based on the novel of the same name, by New York Times reporter Gerald Walker, about a serial killer targeting gay men, in particular those associated with the S&M scene.
Poorly reviewed by critics, Cruising was a modest financial success, though the filming and promotion were dogged by gay rights protesters. The title is a play on words with a dual meaning, as “cruising” can describe police officers on patrol and also cruising for sex.Read More »

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Most films—especially taut, lower-budgeted indies—choose one theme or dramatic premise and run with it. Others cross-wire two potent and ostensibly unrelated ideas and bask in the sparks they generate.

The terrifically assured and engrossing Brazilian film “Don’t Call Me Son” is a great example of the latter breed. On the one hand, writer/director Anna Muylaert invites us to contemplate the fluidity of adolescent gender identity via the story of teenage boy who’s testing boundaries by drifting provocatively between male and female appearances. (If this sounds like a topic for a Gender Studies class, fear not: the film is a drama, not a lecture.) On the other hand, Muylaert also probes how much of who we are comes from family, since, additionally, her tale concerns kids who were removed from their biological parents at birth.Read More »

L.A. Plays Itself begins as a mock-pastorale, with a steamy woodland encounter between a long-haired blonde guy and a hunky brunette whose face, typical of the director, we can barely discern. This extended hardcore sequence of outdoor sex gives way to images of bulldozers tearing down parts of the city; noisy, car-choked streets; and opportunistic encounters that occur both onscreen and on the audio track, the latter in the form of a conversation between a hayseed from Texas who’s just arrived in town and a predator who pretends to warn him of the dangers of the “big city” as a kind of nervous foreplay ritual. Halsted’s sex is sweaty and desperate, set against images of cruelty and destruction both in the bedrooms, bathhouses, and casual sexspaces where it occurs and in the grim, trashy world looming just outside. The sardonic commentaries of the director, who’s also usually a participant even when only seen in shadow, add unexpected touches of humanity.L.A. Plays Itself is a film of private rituals publicly exposed
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