Borrow a streaming service password from family– however you define it!–and dive in. There’s a lot of history to explore, and there’s never been a better time to do it. While gay characters tended until much too recently to be one-dimensional, white, and doomed, in 2018 Barry Jenkins won a Best Picture Oscar telling the layered and hopeful story of a gay Black man in Moonlight.
1982’s tentative Making Love derailed the careers of its two lead actors 2017’s Call Me By Your Name cemented its pair as movie stars. The range runs from the shoestring brilliance of The Watermelon Woman to the big-budget glitter-bomb that is Rocketman. We’ve come a ways in fifty years, from the self-loathing middle-aged men of The Boys In The Band to the peppy teens of Love, Simon. The conditions are optimal for you to catch up on your queer cinema. The few bars that have reopened are for the reckless and foolish, and let's be honest: there’s only so much dancing a person can do on Zoom.
We’re stuck inside unless we’re marching for police reform.
This year, the public events of LGBTQ Pride Month-much like sports, school, and life itself-are cancelled. And if you can bear the crowds, you leave a Pride festival with a draft-beer buzz, an application for a rainbow-flag credit card, and a paper fan with Chelsea Handler’s face on it. See Filmsites own Greatest Guy Movies of All-Time (illustrated) for contrast, and Memorable and Great Chick Flicks. Your bank, cable company and sandwich shop rush to remind you of their support for the LGBTQ+ community. 50 Best Guy Movies of All-Time: Mens Journal selected The 50 Best Guy Movies of All-Time in their December 2003 issue, written by David Chute & Mark Horowitz. The gay neighborhood thumps with house music. Under normal circumstances, June busts out all over with Pride Month parties and parades. Researching German-inspired themes in international cinema, for example in the films of Luchino Visconti and François Ozon, is also worthwhile.The good news: this year you have time for some movies. Whether its modern classics like Milk, high-quality independent films like Miles, or top-notch documentaries like Paris is Burning, this list of the best. For Austrian films, make sure to check out Hans Fädler’s Wiener Brut (1984), Kater (Tomcat ) by Händl Klaus, the documentary Brüder der Nacht (Brothers of the Night) by Patric Chiha (both 2016), and one of the best lesbian stories of the moment: Marie Kreutzer’s Der Boden unter den Füßen (The Ground Beneath My Feet) (2019). est un salaud by Marcel Gisler (Switzerland, 1998), and Der Kreis (The Circle) by Stefan Haupt (Switzerland, 2014).
For starters, there are Daniel Schmid’s films, F. Needless to say, the research should also be extended to Switzerland and Austria. Many German co-productions transcend the usual native-white framework, for example the Turkish-German feature film Lola + Bilidikid by Kutluğ Ataman (1998) and Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki (2018), a German co-production with Kenya and South Africa. Looking up the filmography of the directors mentioned here is highly recommended as is discovering films based on the comics of Ralf König, art and experimental filmmakers such as Michael Brynntrup and Bjørn Melhus, old masters such as Heinz Emigholz and Werner Schroeter, and feminists including Maria Lang, Ute Aurand, and Ulrike Zimmermann who in 2014, with Vulva 3.0, delivered an extraordinary film on female genitalia. Far from being exhaustive, this list is intended to encourage further research.