Week of May 26
LA Latino International Film Festival
This week, LALIFF brings the best in Latino film from the US and around the world, including a number of great Queer picks:
- LA Chicano art collective doc ASCO: Without Permission,
- Magical realist drag bar extravaganza Rains Over Babel,
- Local trans* anthology film Trans Los Angeles,
- Argentine pansexual social commentary Linda,
- and Mexican trans family doc Papá Melissa.
Check these films and even more at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival's 24th year.
Black Cat Cinema Series
We are so excited for a ongoing new Queer cinema series to launch in Los Angeles! The Black Cat Cinema Series is a new monthly series hosted by LOOK Cinemas in Glendale, curated by a trio of queer filmmakers : Daniel Talbott, Javier Fuentes-León, and Andrew Klaus-Vineyard.
The series begins June 9 with I Am Divine, the biopic of the drag queen Divine who went from early John Waters muse to mainstream celebrity. Screening includes a Q&A with director Jeffrey Schwarz (Vito, Tab Hunter Confidential).
Taking Pride at the AC
Authors Alonso Duralde and Caden Mark Gardner present a three film series at the AC in June, picking films featured in their books Hollywood Pride and Corpses, Fools and Monsters. Selected films include camp classic Cobra Woman, Holly Woodlawn star vehicle Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, and magical suburban trans childhood flick Ma Vie en Rose.
Taking Pride at the American Cinematheque ↗
Also This Week
Manila in the Claws of Light
May 27, 7:30 PM @ Vidiots Eagle Theater
Lino Brocka's nephew, filmmaker Q. Allen Brocka in person
This bruising social drama, about a young man moving to Manila from a rural island, is considered one of the best films from the Philippines. Directed by out filmmaker Lino Brocka, who was jailed for his art and activism, the film passes briefly through Manila's gay underground -- the primary setting of Brocka's later film Macho Dancer.
Also screens Jun 6, 4pm at Los Feliz 3 as part of American Cinematheque's Bleak Week.
Tickets from American Cinematheque ↗
Rope on Nitrate
May 30, 7:30 PM @ Academy Museum
Is this the original "be gay do crimes" movie? Though heavily censored, this one-take Hitchcock thriller (from out screenwriter Arthur Laurents) is based off the real-life Leopold and Loeb case, where two gay students killed a boy just to see if they could get away with it.
The Little Mermaid
May 31 & Jun 1, 2:00 PM @ New Beverly Cinema
This Disney classic, about a mermaid who dreams of being human, was co-written by out lyricist Howard Ashman. Ashman was openly gay during his career in the Disney Renaissance, and died of complications of AIDS while Beauty and the Beast was still in production. And Urusla is plainly inspired by drag queen Divine.
Tickets from The New Beverly ↗
Rebel Without a Cause
May 31, 7:00 PM @ Old Town Music Hall
"It is of course vita that there be no inference of a questionable or homosexual relationship between Plato and Jim" wrote the MPPC censors, scolding this film from bisexual director Nicholas Ray with bi star James Dean and the "first gay teen on screen" played by out Sal Mineo.
Tickets from Old Town Music Hall ↗
Next Week
FREE: In the Best Interests of the Children (1977)
Jun 06, 7:30 PM @ Hammer Museum
Filmmakers Frances Reid and S. Topiary Landberg. in person
Gay mothers argue for the right to custody of their children.
Tickets from UCLA Film & TV Archive ↗
FREE: The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love
Jun 07, 7:30 PM @ Hammer Museum
30th anniversary screening!
Two teenagers whose unexpected friendship grows into the joyful wildness of first love, sending the two of them on the run.
Tickets from UCLA Film & TV Archive ↗
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
Jun 07, 9:45 PM @ Vidiots Eagle Theater
Is there a film more ahead of its time? This funny but melancholy arthouse classic, set in a drag bar/brothel in the underground of 1960s Tokyo, is a film that still feels wildly fresh and boundary-pushing even 55 years later.
The Leather Boys (1964)
Jun 07, 10:00 PM & Jun 08, 6:00 PM @ Eastwood Performing Arts Center
Reggie and Dot are a young South London couple who get married before they really get to know each other. After the marriage, they quickly begin to drift apart. Dot seems content to pursue her own interests, until Reggie meets Pete, a fellow cyclist, and begins to explore his own identity.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Jun 07, 11:59 PM @ New Beverly Cinema
Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig undergoes a personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an ‘internationally ignored’ but divinely talented rock diva, inhabiting a ‘beautiful gender of one’.
Tickets from The New Beverly ↗
An Evening with Melanie Lynskey and Clea DuVall
Jun 08, 7:00 PM @ Vidiots Eagle Theater
Melanie Lynskey and Clea DuVall in person
A special conversation and very-rarely-screened top-secret screening of one of Melanie’s earliest and most defining films, a dark, imaginative, and groundbreaking coming-of-age story. You won’t find this masterpiece streaming anywhere, and certainly not with the star of the film.
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker
Jun 06, 10:00 PM & Jun 07, 2:00 PM @ Eastwood Performing Arts Center
An orphaned teenager finds himself being dominated by his aunt who’s hell-bent on keeping him with her…at all costs.
Victor/Victoria
Jun 07, 3:30 PM @ Vidiots Eagle Theater
Author Alonso Duralde in person
Julie Andrews stars in this musical remake of the 1933 German film about a woman singer who takes a job as a female impersonator.
Paris is Burning
Jun 07, 8:00 PM & Jun 08, 2:00 PM @ Eastwood Performing Arts Center
This iconic documentary, filmed over seven years at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in New York City's ballroom scene, captures the end of a "Golden Age" drag scene--and introduced a whole lot of Queer vocabulary to mainstream audiences.
In Cinemas
Perfect Endings (Opens Jun 4)
The latest gay comedy from Brazilian director Daniel Ribeiro (The Way He Looks) follows a filmmaker and his ex--who is now his best friend.
Perfect Endings Showtimes from Fandango ↗
Brokeback Mountain (Opens Jun 20)
Twentieth anniversary theatrical re-release for the 2005 Oscar-winning gay romance from Ang Lee.
Brokeback Mountain Showtimes from Fandango ↗
Even More Queer Film Events
