Queer Cinema(s)

Paul Newman made his directorial debut and Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward, stars as Rachel Cameron, a 35-year-old unmarried schoolteacher who feels as though she’s wasted her life. Rachel’s best friend, Calla Mackie (Estelle Parsons), invites her to attend a religious revival meeting. Here Rachel is swept up in the emotional fervor orchestrated by a young guest preacher (Terry Kiser). This is the first of several cathartic incidents which convince Rachel to kick over the traces and express her own needs and emotions. She has a brief sexual liaison with an old family friend (James Olson), and is delighted at the notion that she might have become pregnant. Rachel ends up alone and childless (her “pregnancy” was nothing more than a benign cyst), but still determined to forge a new life for herself. Based the novel A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, Rachel, Rachel won New York Film Critics awards for both Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, and an Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward.Read More »

“The 1970’s was the decade of the gothic lesbian vampire film. The exploitation efforts of Jean Rollin (LIPS OF BLOOD), Jess Franco (VAMPYROS LESBOS), and Hammer (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE) were enormously popular at the time. These films successfully combined the fear of death and eroticism, which struck a cord with male audiences. Many of the films merely hinted at the overt sexuality, and most never fully explored the sexual aspects of the genre’s premise. That all changed in 1974, when upstart Spanish director Jose Ramon Larrez (or Joe as he is called stateside) raised the bar with the ultimate depiction of sex and horror, VAMPYRES. Larrez teamed with producer Brian Smedley-Astin to film their adult vampire epic in England. By the time VAMPYRES was released there, the censors cut out most of the offensive scenes, castrating the power of this artsy exploitation picture. Luckily when the film played the Drive-In circuit in America (as DAUGHTERS OF DRACULA), we got to see what the British audience didn’t–powerful sex trysts and disturbing death scenes. Thanks to Larrez’s scripting and directing skills, VAMPYRES rose to top of its genre. Today, VAMPYRES is a highly regarded classic in Euro horror-circles, and rightly so…Read More »

Keiko is a 23-year-old lonely virgin who lives in a tiny room, and hopes to meet someone in the cafe she frequents. After a bad affair with one of the other diners, she vows to give up men. She then begins a happy lesbian relationship with her co-worker Kazuyo. However she is under constant pressure from her father to marry.Read More »

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Jean Rollin’s third feature film Le Frisson des Vampires, alternately known as Thrill of the Vampires, Shiver of the Vampires and Sex and the Vampire, is one of the key works in his impressive filmography. A perfect melding of all of Rollin’s thematic obsessions, Le Frisson des Vampires is the director’s first masterpiece and one of his greatest achievements.Read More »

Pierfrancesco Campanella’s first giallo (also his directorial debut). The plot is about a series of murders among homosexuals, but the erotic element is mostly represented in heterosexual couplings, so no worries there. Starring the always excellent Tomas Arana, with Alida Vali, Gioia Scola, Lorenzo Flaherty, Natasha Hovey and Barbara Scoppa.Read More »

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The story of a passion between Jean and Farid, thwarted by uncomprehension, opposite cultures, and impossible departures. linkRead More »

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In this autobiographical feature, Frank Ripploh plays himself: a German elementary-school instructor who lives a double life in his beloved Berlin, socializing with his fellow teachers only when he has to, and venturing into a world of anonymous sex whenever he can. In-between bathroom encounters and trips with his colleagues to the bowling alley, Ripploh manages to forge a steady relationship with a handsome, sad-eyed theater manager named Bernd Broaderup. As Ripploh’s sexual ardor for Broaderup gives way to a wandering eye, and Broaderup begins pressuring Ripploh to give up the city and its many temptations, the couple’s relationship replays a scene that was occurring in urban areas across the world and was satirized in such cultural snapshots as the Larry Kramer novel Faggots. Ripploh, who wrote, directed, and starred in Taxi Zum Klo, which, unlike most German films at the time, received no state funding, saw the picture become an international art-house hit after it played at 1981’s New York and Berlin film festivals.Read More »

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Fiona is a crack-smoking prostitute. She lives a reckless life outside the law where she kills three cops with the same nonchalance with which she turns tricks… Gritty and unsparing, the film blends an original screenplay with actual documentary footage shot in a Lower East Side crack-house with prostitutes playing some of the key roles. The tender relationship between these women is felt without descending into voyeurism or pity and depicted with an authenticity that transcends the line between fiction and documentary.Read More »

Synopsis: A Woman abadoned by the husband, suffer and pass for differents adventures until she finds the love.
The film was never shoted in cinemas, only in TV -1985Read More »