March recommendations: Your top 3 queer films, a mermaid's love life, and Liberace the flower child
Added 2024-03-30 19:47:00 +0000 UTCHello there!
Time once again for the monthly recommendations video, where I gather viewing recommendations from folks like you and pass them along -- so if you like what I make, you'll probably like this stuff too!
Last month I asked what you would put on your top-three queer movie list, and GOOD LORD did you all have a ton of great suggestions. There's no way I could list them all, but here's a link to all of the comments, and here's some of the titles that popped up most frequently:
Beautiful Thing and My Beautiful Launderette - two British films about young men finding each other amidst adverse circumstances
Torch Song Trilogy - I forgot to mention this one in the video but it's a lovely movie about a drag performer and his family
Paris is Burning - A doc about New York the ballroom scene that literally everyone on Earth should see
Brokeback Mountain - Two cowboys in love
Carol - Two women discovering each other & themselves in the 1950s
Pride - An unlikely alliance between striking miners and the gays
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - A big brassy Australian musical road trip
Victor/Victoria - A musical drag farce in 30s Paris
La Cage/Birdcage - Drag farces in 70s France and 90s Miami
Cabaret - A musical scream of terror set in 1930s Berlin (and uncomfortably timely for when the film was made, during the Vietnam War, as well as today!)
The Watermelon Woman - A fascinating rom-com about lesbian history that touched off a big controversy over the National Endowment for the Arts
Trick - Young cuties looking for sex (and accidentally discovering love instead) in New York
Latter Days - Mormons boys overcoming trauma
Were the World Mine - A riff on Midsummer Night's Dream that I really wish I could figure out how to enjoy
My request for this month: Please send me international queer stuff that you think folks should check out!
And speaking of international, I got a lot of recommendations for British entertainment to check out, especially starring Glynis Johns. Miranda (a movie about an amorous mermaid) and The Court Jester (with Danny Kaye, a maybe-bisexual?) come highly recommended. Also check out this lovely short documentary about Polari. And if you're in the mood to be horrified, read up on Peter Wyngarde's misguided album When Sex Leers its Inquisitive Head.
Patron Catharine recommended Geri Jewell's autobiography, which includes interesting details about her time on The Facts of Life, and Justin recommends this BANANAS Paul Lynde holiday special made just last year. Amanda passed along this incredible vision of Liberace making even more of a spectacle of himself than usual, and I counter with Bobby Banas doing The Nitty Gritty, and Lurch doing The Lurch.
I also highly recommend this great video essay by Marlene (aka Avelo, formerly Dreamsounds) about Snow White.
Whewwww that'll keep us busy until next month. Please send me international queer stuff, and until next time ... thanks, Lurch!
Comments
I remember seeing the short film Were the World Mine is based on while warching Logo (i think) back in like, 2004 and was like “well it’s kinda cute but MAN i hate the song they made” and then when I saw it was being made into a full length I couldn’t even bother to watch it
Jamie haDov
2024-04-10 15:12:27 +0000 UTCMy recs for international queer cinema: Les Diaboliques (France, 1955) - A murder-mystery thriller; not explicitly queer, but has a very thick undercurrent of lesbian. Funeral Parade of Roses (Japan, 1969) - A loose Warholian, artsy adaptation of Oedipus Rex set in the underground gay culture of 1960s Tokyo. Zero Patience (1993) - Canadian Sci-fi musical fantasy where "19th-century English explorer Sir Richard Burton meets the ghost of the first AIDS patient in Toronto" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XboL_RWllAQ La Ceremonie (France, 1995) - A sort-of mashup of Funny Games and Parasite featuring Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire in a similar relationship like Diaboliques. Very intense French true crime-styled thriller. - https://letterboxd.com/film/la-ceremonie/ The Dreamers (Euro-American, 2003) - A young American studying in Paris in 1968 strikes up a friendship with a French brother and sister set against the background of the ’68 Paris student riots. The New Yorker said it best: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/movies/saltburn-the-dreamers.html Saint Laurent (France, 2014) - Trippy, aesthetically pleasing biopic of Yves Saint-Laurent that also features Louis Garrel in a fun role. Weekend (UK, 2011) - "Following a Friday night party with his friends, Russell pulls Glen at a club, and, instead of never seeing each other again, the two men spend most of the next day and the following night together." - Google. A masterpiece of a gay romantic drama - https://www.criterion.com/films/27783-weekend François Ozon has many great films about queerness: "Summer of 85", "A Summer Dress", and "Time to Leave" are all highly recommended: https://letterboxd.com/film/time-to-leave/ https://letterboxd.com/film/a-summer-dress/ https://letterboxd.com/film/summer-of-85/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a must as-well for anyone looking for world queer cinema. There's not really any bad film in his oeuvre. - The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) - An theatrical melodrama about two women form a sexual triangle with a fashion designer. https://www.criterion.com/films/27953-the-bitter-tears-of-petra-von-kant (Speaking of Bitter Tears, François Ozon's loose adaptation, "Peter von Kant", is a big queer recommendation as well, with the leads being swapped to men. ) - Fox and his Friends (1975) - "Fox (played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a young, gay member of the German working class. When he meets the older and dapper Max, who has upper-class roots, Fox thinks he may have found someone to help him out, but Max refuses to do so. However, this changes when Fox wins big on the lottery." - Google https://www.criterion.com/films/27957-fox-and-his-friends - Querelle (1982), In a French bordello, a young sailor meets a murderer who also is his supposed brother. Aggressively gay and erotic, in case the Criterion cover didn't make that clear enough. https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/querelle *Song of Love/‘Un chant d’amour’ (France, 1954), Two prisoners in complete isolation in desperate need of human contact devise an unusual way of communicating. Directed and written by Jean Genet (who also wrote the novel Querelle is based on), is also aggressively gay and erotic especially for its time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- My last two recs are followed by quotes from Bintang Lestada: https://letterboxd.com/journal/queer-awakening-bintang-lestada/ I Killed My Mother (France, 2009) - A coming of age romantic drama written, directed and featuring Xavier Dolan - "In his acclaimed debut I Killed My Mother, Dolan painted sex as something sudden, animalistic, which I hadn’t really ever seen in coming-of-age films. The writer-director (only sixteen when he wrote the film, twenty when he made it) also plays the leading character, Hubert, a selfish teen who, in between arguments with his mother, Chantale, explores his budding sexuality at both boarding school and in his growing connection with his secret boyfriend, Antonin (François Arnaud). Dolan’s youthful drive brings a hot realism to the film—and especially to Hubert and Antonin’s paint-splattered lovemaking. Aside from my deepest cultural issue—a screaming match with your mother … my Southeast Asian self cannot comprehend!—the grip that that wall-painting GIF has on Tumblr has been influential to so many of us." Arisan!/The Gathering (Indonesian, 2003) - "I will say this again and again: Nia Dinata deserves her flowers for bring Indonesian (specifically Jakartan) gay lives to mainstream audiences. Taking cues from television series such as Sex and the City and Ally McBeal, Arisan! was a comedy-drama of true delight. It featured the first on-screen kiss between two men in Indonesian film history (Sakti and Nino were the couple!), and won five major Citra Awards at the 2004 Indonesian Film Festival (for best picture, actor, supporting actor, supporting actress and editing). Arisan! spawned a television series and a feature sequel, and gave inspiration to film-critics-who-want-to-be-filmmakers everywhere, by launching the movie-making career of Dinata’s choice of co-screenwriter, Joko Anwar, who is now a prominent director, producer, writer and actor. For me, it was the first depiction of ‘chosen family’ in Indonesian cinema where the people looked like me and my friends. It may seem like a fairy tale to many, but for me it felt closer to a documentary. Above all, Arisan! assured me that there’s a life for gay people here." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sidenote: here's a list of queer Indonesian films, courtesy of Lestada: https://letterboxd.com/bergman_esque/list/qias-queer-representation-in-indonesian-films/ Here's a list with other int. queer films I whole-heartedly recommend: https://letterboxd.com/bergman_esque/list/for-the-gays-longing-and-yearning-will-always/ Also, a special shoutout to another person with recs for int. queer cinema that you probably won't hear about otherwise: https://www.yearendlists.com/list_authors/john-waters-cf8b52e3-f610-46d9-9608-218758dc982b
Justin
2024-04-06 00:18:06 +0000 UTC
