Only in LA
Screenings & Events
Festivals, Special Guests, Retrospectives and more "one night only" queer cinema screenings.
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love
Hammer Museum
30th anniversary screening!
Touching and poignant, the acclaimed coming-of-age comedy The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls In Love tells the story of two teenagers whose unexpected friendship grows into the joyful wildness of first love. Randy (Laurel Holloman), a rebellious working class tomboy, meets the beautiful, popular, well-to-do Evie (Nicole Ari Parker) when she brings her Range Rover into the repair shop where Randy works after school. Immediately intrigued by each other, the two girls start a romance that delights and disrupts their lives, causing Evie to lose her friends, Randy to lie to her parents, and sending the two of them on the run. Sensitive and romantic, funny and sincere, this daring film was hailed as a crossover success upon its release and is now celebrated as an iconic part of the 1990s queer cinema canon. Beloved by audiences, it was often referred to, with relief, as one of the few lesbian movies with a “happy ending where no one dies.”
Paris is Burning
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.
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion “houses,” from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza — PARIS IS BURNING brings it, celebrating the joy of movement, the force of eloquence, and the draw of community.
Funeral Parade of Roses
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.
An electrifying journey into the nether-regions of the late-’60s Tokyo underworld.
The Leather Boys
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
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’.
An Evening with Melanie Lynskey and Clea DuVall
Vidiots Eagle Theater
Melanie Lynskey and Clea DuVall
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.
I Am Divine
Black Cat Cinema Series
LOOK Dine-In Glendale
Director Jeffrey Schwaz
Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.
Showgirls
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
A clumsy depiction of female bisexuality would normally not be enough to make Showgirls count as queer--but the film's cult classic status is sustained in large part by loyal Queer fans. Watch it, then go see documentary "You Don't Nomi" by Jeffrey McHale.
https://letterboxd.com/film/showgirls/
Shortbus
Eastwood Performing Arts Center
Hedwig creator John Cameron Mitchell wrote and directed this sexually explicit ensemble comedy about the intersecting (sex) lives of couples gay straight and in-between, leading up to a gathering at the weekly Shortbus art/sex salon and orgy.
In post-9/11 New York City, an eclectic group of citizens find their lives entangled, personally, romantically, and sexually, at Shortbus, an underground Brooklyn salon infamous for its blend of art, music, politics, and carnality.
Theatrical runs
Now In Theaters
Prefer your movies with popcorn and trailers? Here some the queer films at LA cinemas right now...
On Swift Horses
In the 1950s, a seemingly sensible newlywed and her wayward brother-in-law undertake parallel journeys of risk, romance, and self-discovery.
Perfect Endings
Like the perfect ending of a great film - that is the way filmmaker João describes the end of his 10-year relationship with Hugo. Despite breaking up, they remained best friends. However, reentering the dating scene brought a whirlwind of emotions, revealing that reality can’t be controlled like a movie script.
Block Pass
Willy spends his time with Jojo, his best friend, at La Pampa, the motocross course where Jojo trains for the French championship. One evening, Willy discovers Jojo’s secret. It’s time to leave childhood behind.
Brokeback Mountain: 20th Anniversary
Rodeo cowboy Jack and ranch hand Ennis are hired as sheepherders in 1963 Wyoming. One night on Brokeback Mountain, they spark a physical relationship. Though Ennis marries his longtime sweetheart and Jack marries a fellow rodeo rider, they keep up their tortured, sporadic love affair for 20 years.
