Only in LA
Screenings & Events
Festivals, Special Guests, Retrospectives and more "one night only" queer cinema screenings.
The Celluloid Closet
Vidiots Eagle Theater
Starting in 1972, Vito Russo put together a traveling clip show of LGBT representation in film, marking one of the first efforts to chronicle Queer cinema history. It was turned into a book in 1981 then a movie in 1995, making it a landmark of Queer images in classical Hollywood.
This documentary highlights the historical contexts that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals have occupied in cinema history, and shows the evolution of the entertainment industry’s role in shaping perceptions of LGBT figures. The issues addressed include secrecy – which initially defined homosexuality – as well as the demonization of the homosexual community with the advent of AIDS, and finally the shift toward acceptance and positivity in the modern era.
But I'm a Cheerleader
Summer of Camp
Academy Museum
For anyone who has ever worried that all lesbian films are too serious, Jamie Babbit signle-handedly proves that queer women can be funny as hell in this now-classic queer comedy.
Megan is an all-American girl. A cheerleader. She has a boyfriend. But Megan doesn’t like kissing her boyfriend very much. And she’s pretty touchy with her cheerleader friends. Her conservative parents worry that she must be a lesbian and send her off to “sexual redirection” school, where she must, with other lesbians and gays learn how to be straight.
Hellraiser
Culver Theater
The first film in gay writer/director Clive Barker's pain-and-pleasure demon horror franchise, which only got queerer in the 2022 reboot.
Hedonist Frank Cotton finds a mysterious puzzle box that summons the Cenobites, who open the doors to a dominion where pain and pleasure are indivisible.
Tomboy
Laemmle Glendale
The winner of the Teddy Award at the 2011 Berlinale, this French coming-of-age film from C�line Sciamma (Portrait of a Woman on Fire) follows a 10 year-old who leads a new life as a boy after moving to a new neighborhood.
A French family with two daughters, 10-year-old Laure and 6-year-old Jeanne, moves to a new neighborhood during the summer holidays. With her tomboy ways, Laure is immediately mistaken for a boy by the local kids and passes herself off as Mickaël.
Tangerine
Laemmle NoHo 7
A new queer Christmas classic, Tangerine follows trans workers Sin-Dee and Alexandra on a holiday odyssey across Los Angeles. Shot on a micro budget on three iPhones, Tangerine is a triumph of scrappy indie can-do--that led to Gotham and Spirit awards for co-star Mya Taylor.
It's Christmas Eve in Tinseltown and Sin-Dee is back on the block. Upon hearing that her pimp boyfriend hasn't been faithful during the 28 days she was locked up, the working girl and her best friend, Alexandra, embark on a mission to get to the bottom of the scandalous rumor. Their rip-roaring odyssey leads them through various subcultures of Los Angeles, including an Armenian family dealing with their own repercussions of infidelity.
The Wedding Banquet
Brain Dead Studios
Director Andrew Ahn
Frustrated with his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris and running out of time, Min makes a proposal: a green-card marriage with their friend Angela in exchange for her partner Lee's expensive IVF. Elopement plans are upended, however, when Min's grandmother surprises them with an extravagant Korean wedding banquet.
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.
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Vegas in Space
Vidiots Eagle Theater
This camp classic, distributed by Troma films, is a wacky sci-fi drag story about three soldiers who must take a sex change pill to infiltrate a pleasure planet and fight a galactic villain. Starring drag icons Doris Fish, Miss X, Tippi and more!
Three male soldiers have a sex change so they can go on an undercover mission to an all-woman planet, where they must uncover and foil a plot to disrupt the most important pleasure planet in the universe.
Tongues Untied
Getty Museum
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the “Institute of Snap!thology,” where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap.
Theatrical runs
Now In Theaters
Prefer your movies with popcorn and trailers? Here some the queer films at LA cinemas right now...
The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival
With her distinctive high-gloss sensual nudes and cooly elegant portraits of high society during the Jazz Age, Polish-Jewish artist Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980) helped define the Art Deco style and the glamour and transgressive vitality of post-WWI Paris. Feminist, style icon, and bisexual libertine, Lempicka combined cubism, classicism, and surrealism to reinvent the female figure, not as an object but as the protagonist.
Heightened Scrutiny
From director Sam Feder and the team that brought you DISCLOSURE comes this critically timed snapshot of the state of transgender rights and justice in America. ACLU attorney Chase Strangio takes on not only the Supreme Court but also the court of public opinion, as news coverage shapes the national conversation on this flashpoint topic for our times.
