Only in LA
Screenings & Events
Festivals, Special Guests, Retrospectives and more "one night only" queer cinema screenings.
The People's Joker
Brain Dead Studios
This parody of a certain caped crusader through the lens of trans creator Vera Drew was quick to disappear after its premiere at TIFF, due to rights issues from an unnamed giant media company. Why so serious?
A law-breaking comedian who is grappling with her gender identity forms a new anti-comedy troupe with a friend and finds herself battling a fascistic caped crusader.
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
Videotheque
Manhattan drag queens Vida Boheme and Noxeema Jackson impress regional judges in competition, securing berths in the Nationals in Los Angeles. When the two meet pathetic drag novice Chi-Chi Rodriguez — one of the losers that evening — the charmed Vida and Noxeema agree to take the hopeless youngster under their joined wing. Soon the three set off on a madcap road trip across America and struggle to make it to Los Angeles in time.
Pink Narcissus
Alamo Drafthouse DTLA
This lush erotic epic, framed as the fantasies of a bored rentboy, was filmed over the course of six years on elaborate sets built inside the Manhattan apartment of director James Bidgood. No advance sales, tickets are free and open to the public.
An outrageous erotic poem focusing on the daydreams of a beautiful boy prostitute who, from the seclusion of his ultra-kitsch apartment, conceives a series of interlinked narcissistic fantasies populated by matadors, dancing boys, slaves, and leather-clad bikers.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Vidiots Eagle Theater
Two drag queens and a transgender woman contract to perform a drag show at a resort in Alice Springs, a town in the remote Australian desert. As they head west from Sydney aboard their lavender bus, Priscilla, the three friends come to the forefront of a comedy of errors, encountering a number of strange characters, as well as incidents of homophobia, whilst widening comfort zones and finding new horizons.
Strange World
Academy Museum
This Disney film stirred controversy when it came out, for having an out Queer teen, voiced by out actor and comedian Jaboukie Young-White.
A journey deep into an uncharted and treacherous land, where fantastical creatures await the legendary Clades—a family of explorers whose differences threaten to topple their latest, and by far most crucial, mission.
Love, Simon
Academy Museum
Everyone deserves a great love story, but for 17-year-old Simon Spier, it’s a little more complicated. He hasn’t told his family or friends that he’s gay, and he doesn’t know the identity of the anonymous classmate that he’s fallen for online.
Ma Vie En Rose
Los Feliz 3
Author Alonso Duralde
Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year-old certainty, she believes she was meant to be a little girl – and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where she expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation and guilt – as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble. As suburban prejudices close around them, family loves and loyalties are tested in the ever-escalating dramatic turns of Alain Berliner’s critically acclaimed first feature. Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and a favorite at festivals around the world, this unique film experience delivers magic of the rarest sort through a story of difference, rejection, and childlike faith in miracles.
Looking for Langston
Double Feature with The Sticky Fingers of Time
Queer, Period: Desire Through The Ages
Academy Museum
A hypnotic experimental film that weaves between reality and a fantastic recreation of the Harlem Renaissance of Langston Hughes, exploring the lives and desires of Queer Black writers and artists throughout time.
A black and white, fantasy-like recreation of high-society gay men during the Harlem Renaissance, with archival footage and photographs intercut with a story. A wake is going on, with mourners gathered around a coffin. Downstairs is an elegant bar where tuxedoed men dance and talk. One of them has a dream in which he comes upon Beauty, who seems to reject him, although when he awakes, Beauty is sleeping beside him. His story and his visits to the jazz and dance club are framed by voices reading from the poetry and essays of Hughes and others. The text is rarely explicit, but the freedom of gay Black men in the 1920s in Harlem is suggested and celebrated visually.
Mulholland Drive
Eastwood Performing Arts Center
In David Lynch's maniacal, notorious thriller, amnesia-suffering Rita, who barely escapes murder on winding, hilly Mulholland Drive, makes her way down to Hollywood, where she sneaks into the apartment of bright-eyed aspiring actress Betty.
Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
Theatrical runs
Now In Theaters
Prefer your movies with popcorn and trailers? Here some the queer films at LA cinemas right now...
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.
The Queen of My Dreams
Pakistani Muslim Mariam and her Canadian-born daughter Azra come of age in two different eras against the backdrop of a shared obsession with Bollywood fantasy.
The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka and the Art of Survival
A visually stunning and sweeping feature documentary that traces the life and survival of the renowned bisexual painter through her powerful paintings – from her rise to international stardom in 1920s Paris, to her move to the United States in 1940, fleeing the rise of fascism, and her revival in the current art market. Tamara de Lempicka was the preeminent Art Deco painter, known for her high-gloss sensual nudes and portraits of high society during the Jazz Age. She was marginalized and gained notoriety for her romantic liaisons with her models and her indulgent, decadent lifestyle, but she was so much more.
