Maravilhosa

How did Hollywood pitch movies about gays and lesbians between 1956 and 1977? Here are theatrical trailers for 27 mainstream and art-house films, presented chronologically from "Tea and Sympathy" to "Outrageous!" More than half are films released between 1968 and 1972. Half are dramas and half are comedies, with farce dominating the films released after 1971. At least three advertise X-rated films: "The Killing of Sister George," "Midnight Cowboy," and Visconti's "The Damned." There's no voice-over commentary for this compilation, but it does include advertisements for snacks and one warning against public displays of affection aimed at "her" to control "him."

Victor and Fernando are hairstylists in Mexicali. They are the go-to professionals for the city's socialites. To their customers, they were a lovely couple until they decided to legally marry. Losing the support of people and friends an confronting a blacklash of criticism, through their fight they woke up members of Mexiciali's society to fight homophobia and inequality.

What is the heteronorm? What is the cultural canon and how is it related to this heteronorm?

Fragments 83 rediscovers—and repurposes—Richard Millen 1983 experimental film If You Can’t Be with the One You Love, shot in Brooklyn and the West Village in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. The resulting documentary explores the hunt for sex/love, the joy of making cinema, and the inexorable passage of time.

Baltimore-based drag queen Shaunda Leer (Scott Murdock) discusses why she's chosen to perform in drag for over ten years. She also recounts several stories about her family relationships and concerns about her physical safety as a member of the GLBTIQ community.

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Mona's Candle Light was discovered among reels of film that Geoff Alexander, of the Bay Area-based Academic Film Archive of North America, bought at a flea market in an unmarked box. There are no credits, so it is impossible to determine who shot it and for what purpose. The film is 1950s footage, probably amateur, of a well know lesbian club (which had opened in the 1930s), Mona's Candle Light, and it is an invaluable document of that underground scene. (archive.org)

Two scantily clad men pose, wrestle, and jokingly try to out-flex one another in what amounts to a beauty contest of its own.

Caro Comes Out is a queer torture experiment, but also a comedy, but also a short film about coming out to your entire Cuban family.

A filmmaker captures her wife’s journey of high-risk pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood in this short documentary. Consequently, she discovers her own fear and insecurity surrounding the adventures of parenthood — all while completing the adoption process for her non-biological son, as required by heteronormative North Carolina state law.

In the 50s and 60s, deep in the American countryside at the foot of the Catskills, a small wooden house with a barn behind it was home to the first clandestine network of cross-dressers. Diane and Kate are now 80 years old. At the time, they were men and part of this secret organization. Today, they relate this forgotten but essential chapter of the early days of trans-identity. It is a story full of noise and fury, rich in extraordinary characters, including the famous Susanna, who had the courage to create this refuge that came to be known as Casa Susanna.