The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin celebrates one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, following his evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to reclaim their lives.
Social & External
The people behind it
Armistead Maupin
Self
Laura Linney
Olympia Dukakis
Ian McKellen
Jonathan Groff
Kate Bornstein
Margaret Cho
Amanda Palmer
Neil Gaiman
Charles Busch
A heartfelt and uplifting portrayal about one young remarkable drag queen from Leith who, despite suffering from cystic fibrosis, lives life to the max. At 24 years of age, Jordan McKinley knows he is on borrowed time. This Leith-born-and-bred drama teacher, DJ and top Edinburgh drag artist faces his medical condition head-on and lives his life at 100 miles an hour.
Take six young gay guys, one bus, seven days, and ten video cameras. Add a trip to Burning Man - a festival of radical self-expression in the desert - and you get this self-aware documentary. What begins as the pilot of a reality-based internet program evolves into a longer project delving beyond the apparent stereotypes of its cast: young porn star, Jason; sexy actor-slash-waiter, Charles; brash Swedish Olympic diver, JMY; witty music composer, Damon; plus the project's permissive producer, Billy, and its at times frustrated young director, Lance. As addictive as your favorite reality TV show, but addressing much deeper questions, this is a trip you won't want to miss
Director Max O'Connor Hurni crafts an intimate portrait of his family, tracing its history, exploring how it shaped his identity, and reflecting on his experience growing up with same-sex parents.
François, Renée, Gisèle, Sylvain. These seniors do not have much in common, but their lives have been shaped by episodes of abandonment, rejection, or fear. Some still live in invisibility, afraid of how others will look at them. Loneliness weighs heavily. For others, living with HIV has worn down their bodies, and old age arrives more quickly. Then there is a hope: that of a house in Lyon where they will finally be able to be themselves. A place where it will be possible to grow old without ever having to hide again. There is that family we choose for ourselves. The feeling that a new chapter is opening—the last one—filled with promise, and with the boldness of all those first times we finally allow ourselves, so late in life. But when it comes to becoming visible, the fears accumulated over a lifetime are never far away. And they come to pull our courageous dreamers back from their dream: should they take the leap?
Filmmaker Grace Lee leaves her Missouri home to travel the country and talk with an array of women who share her name.
From feminist director and provocateur Monika Treut comes this eclectic collection of four short documentaries profiling unconventional women. One has Camille Paglia explaining her ways of thinking. One has Annie Sprinkle explaining her approach to performance art, which includes inviting audience members to view her cervix with a speculum. One interview investigates a professional woman's preoccupation with sadomasochism. The fourth documents the life adjustments of an F2M (female-to-male) sex change who looks like a dangerous biker, with slick black hair, a matching motorcycle jacket, and tattoos.
Iranian-American filmmaker Mehrnaz Saeedvafa traces her journey from growing up as young girl in Tehran to adjusting to life in America, while she reflects on how the films of Jerry Lewis spoke to her as an outsider in both countries. Peppered with clips from Lewis’ films, as well as other Hollywood classics, that have been dubbed into Farsi, this short documentary is “an invaluable cross-cultural lesson,” said esteemed film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who called Jerry and Me one of the best films of 2012.
A hilarious and at times provocative film about a middle-aged American single-mother living in Switzerland and her quest to find out if she'll be invisible when she's no longer the woman with the biggest breasts in the room.
This is the tale of a young woman, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, allowing kids from all over the world to live their life through hers. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a new generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old.
Pepsi is an individual in sexual transition looking for a stable job as a caregiver. Former member of MILF, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front active in an island of southern Philippines, she escaped from her country to work as a nurse for over 10 years in Gaddafi's Libya. Because of gender discrimination, she has been forced to join the flow of refugees.
These documentary sketches were made when the famed novelist was an anthropology student seeking to preserve a record of African American life in the rural South. Includes Children's games and baptism - Miami, Aug. 1929; Children's games and man with ax - April 1928; Children dancing and girl rocking on porch - Jan/Feb 1929; Baseball crowd and boy dancing capers Jan/Feb 1929.
This film from the Second World War is a report on how Canadian women were trained to handle many kinds of work in the Canadian Women's Army Corps, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. Basic training, everyday life in the forces and the contribution of women to Canada's fighting strength are illustrated.
Breaking The Frame is a feature–length documentary portrait of the New York artist Carolee Schneemann by Canadian filmmaker Marielle Nitoslawska. A pioneer of performance and body art as well as avant-garde cinema, Schneemann has been breaking the frames of the art world for five decades, in a variety of mediums, challenging assumptions of feminism, gender, sexuality, and identity.
A forbidden love story played out in a decade that would soon spawn the sexual revolution. Part historical documentary and part experimental narrative the film reconstructs a mesmerizing and erotic narrative from 60 hours of reel-to-reel audiotape discovered in a suitcase. Recorded in the 1960's by a Mid-western woman and her lover they chronicle the details of their adulterous love affair. Reliant on recording devises to document and memorialize their affair the tape recorder evolves as a confidant, witness and participant, always omnipresent creating a welcomed threesome. Mirroring the compulsion to confess ones indiscretions in today's Internet world these captivating recordings speak to an audience that can remember Bert Parks as well as one who has never set finger to a rotary phone.
The film follows Doc’s journey through his time in the military, boxing, and kink, and his stuggles with identity, revealing how combining the sport of boxing and the world of kink helped him define strength and masculinity on his own terms. As the founder of the New York/Northeast chapter of Onyx, a leather organization that offers membership, education, and support for Black and Brown people within the kink and BDSM community, Doc’s life is a lens through which we can gain a better understanding of the experiences of queer men of color. Blending archival materials, intimate interviews, and vérité footage that paints a cinematic picture of past and present queer scenes. Doc's voice in the interviews is the thread that weaves this story together. There are also moments where we step into the ring and the vérité is used to amplify the erotic tension, the athleticism, and the dangers that one might experience when participating in this kink.
An observational look at the lives of five Toronto rappers.
Joe Papp, the founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival and, subsequently, The Public Theater—arguably the most important theatre in North America—is profiled in this documentary that neither sanctifies nor vilifies him. He brought us free Shakespeare in the Park, Hair and A Chorus Line, and nurtured many of America’s greatest playwrights, directors and actors. His complex personality and mercurial behavior are much in evidence and spoken of with frankness through interviews with some of America’s most celebrated artists, including Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Kevin Kline, and James Earl Jones.
“I don’t sleep at night... What we call experience the younger generation calls a chain of mistakes,” reflects Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres. Here, his life and career are chronicled, in all their contradictions: his arrival in Israel, his experiences with Ben-Gurion, the Oslo Accords, his rivalry—and eventual cooperation—with Yitzhak Rabin, and his current status in Israel. “Ultimately, there is something very melancholy in this portrait. Peres, it seems, is both the dream and its shattering. Aware of his achievements, pained about his failures, he continues to look forward with eternal optimism.” (Jerusalem International Film Festival)
Images and poems of the celebrated couple Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet. Elsa’s youth as recalled by Aragon, with commentary by Elsa.
Documentary that explores the lives of 14 female U.S. senators and the uniquely feminine challenges they face, including the sometimes difficult balance between their roles as public servants and wives and mothers.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone.
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
When a feminist filmmaker sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Chronicling Cassie Jaye’s journey exploring an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.
This special explores the return of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to the screen, as well as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to their classic roles. Director Deborah Chow leads the cast and crew as they create new heroes and villains that live alongside new incarnations of beloved Star Wars characters, and an epic story that dramatically bridges the saga films.
An investigative look and analysis of gender disparity in Hollywood, featuring accounts from well-known actors, executives and artists in the Industry.
With unprecedented access to the official archives and intimate recollections from the band, both current and past, Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition invites fans to experience one of the most iconic journeys in music history. Spanning five decades, this electrifying documentary charts the band’s rise from the pubs of East London to the world’s biggest stadiums. Featuring exclusive interviews with band members and contributors such as Javier Bardem, Lars Ulrich and Chuck D, as well as all-new animated sequences of the band's legendary mascot, Eddie, the film offers a rare and intimate look at Iron Maiden’s uncompromising vision and unwavering connection with their truly global army of fans.
An IMAX 3D camera chronicles the effort of 7 astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
This character-driven film considers the evolving sex trafficking landscape as seen by the main players: the exploited, the pimps, the johns that fuel the business, and the cops who fight to stop it.
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.
An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
In a warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of this city.
Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.
A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
Giving fans unprecedented access to the real life of the music sensation, Katy Perry: Part of Me exposes the hard work, dedication and phenomenal talent of a girl who remained true to herself and her vision in order to achieve her dreams. Featuring rare behind-the-scenes interviews, personal moments between Katy and her friends, and all-access footage of rehearsals, choreography, Katy’s signature style and more, Katy Perry: Part of Me reveals the singer’s unwavering belief that if you can be yourself, then you can be anything.