An Abusada Night (2023)

Mr. Leather

Dom Barbudo, a pioneer in the São Paulo gay and BDSM community and elected first Mister Leather Brasil in 2017, prepares to pass on the mantle to one of the four contestants in the second edition of the contest.

The Last Taboo

Hard to imagine, but true: According to current estimates, out of 500,000 active male football professionals worldwide, under ten (10) are openly homosexual. While homosexuality hardly plays a role in other areas of life today, the topic seems to be completely taboo in professional football. The feature-length documentary THE LAST TABOO lets those who broke exactly this taboo tell their very personal stories alongside Thomas Hitzlsperger. Like the British professional footballer Justin Fashanu (*1961 in London; † 1998 in London), who broke this taboo for the first time in 1990 and paid for it with his life. His niece Amal tells his story. Marcus Urban, on the other hand, was about to make the jump to the Bundesliga as a teenager and, by deciding to come out, he also went against his big dream. The stories of the US professional Collin Martin and the British player-coach Matt Morton, on the other hand, suggest that normality is not far away.

There are things in this world that are yet to be named

"There are things in this world that are yet to be named" centers around Solanum plastisexum - an Australian tomato whose sexual expression is unpredictable and unstable, challenging even the fluid norms of the plant kingdom. Footage of the team of botanists who recently used their Solanum research to explode notions of sexual normativity in any plant or animal is combined with a voiceover of letters sent between science writer Rachel Carson and her lover Dorothy Freeman. "There are things in this world that are yet to be named" is a meditation on erasure, indefinability, and the intersection of queer and environmental histories.

Tomatoes

Across the installation's multiple channels, the camera circles a group of artists as they sit together in a field eating, licking, and squeezing ripe tomatoes. Throughout the ever-changing scene, kisses, whispers, and caresses are shared with a casual, gentle intimacy that reflects interconnectivity and abundance. These queer and desirous exchanges constitute a portrait of collectivity wherein individuals come together as distinct parts of a whole.

Resident Ground Floor

Heiko, 51, a sheet metal former trained in GDR times, unemployed since the fall of the wall, pisses on his bed and on the carpet. The film encounters Heiko's dysfunctional family history and his decision to be alone forever. Piss and GDR, a reflection of how deep the consequences of the fall of the Wall are still in the bodies of some people to this day.

Lake

Lake gazes down at a still body of water from a birds-eye view, while a group of artists peacefully float in and out of the frame or work to stay at the surface. As they glide farther away and draw closer together, they reach out in collective queer and desirous exchanges — holding hands, drifting over and under their neighbors, making space, taking care of each other with a casual, gentle intimacy while they come together as individual parts of a whole. The video reflects on notions of togetherness and feminist theorist Silvia Federici’s call to “reconnect what capitalism has divided: our relation with nature, with others, and our bodies.”

Schlafmütze

While a young woman sleeps unawares in her bed, three creatures emerge from her dreams and playfully wreak havoc on her room. Before the woman wakes up, they disappear again.

How God Created Us: Coming Out in the Catholic Church

125 employees of the Catholic Church come out as queer! In the exclusive ARD documentary, believers in the service of the Catholic Church in Germany dare to go public together. People who identify as non-heterosexual talk about fighting for their church - sometimes at the risk of losing their jobs as a result. There are priests, religious brothers, parish assistants, diocese employees, religion teachers, kindergarten teachers, social workers and many more who report intimidation, denunciations, deep injuries, decades of hide and seek and double lives. The Catholics report a system in which pressure, fear and arbitrariness leave employees uncertain as to what exactly happens when they stand by their sexual orientation or identity. The investigative documentary listens to those who live their faith every day and are nevertheless degraded by the church as an institution.

Corrupt Colour

Corrupt Colour follows childhood friends and self-proclaimed internet pop-stars, Emily and Gia as they set up their first live concert but their delusions of grandeur are compromised when the live show of their dreams becomes a nightmare. The show must go on and with the help of their closest friends, irreverent leads Emily and Gia are forced to reckon with their true place in the public eye. With poignant lyrics, loud personalities, and unique creative decisions, Emily and Gia take us on a hilarious and melancholy journey through identity in the digital age that leaves us all asking "who am I trying to be?"

The Unicorn

Peter Grudzien is the lone musical force behind The Unicorn, an openly gay country music album. With the same rawness of a life full of ups and downs, The Unicorn, the movie, follows his personal and artistic journey, which includes mental problems and a peculiar and chaotic family.

To Be Sound is to Be Solid

When artist Erin Johnson and film editor Charlotte Prager moved into a seaside house in 2021, they knew only a handful of facts about the two women who designed and built it in 1971. The two women - art collector Mary-Leigh Smart and artist Beverly Hallam - were exacting about their specifications for the house, and they lived there together for over forty years. In "To be Sound is to be Solid," the filmmakers venture to decipher the house's opaque queer history by studying its complicated and circuitous floor plan. "To be Sound is to be Solid" is a film of layered intimacies and vicarious encounters. By investigating indefinability, erasure, and transparency in queer archives and scientific research, the film builds connections between lesbian, architectural, and environmental histories.

Moonlight People

Two young men and two girls on a moonlit night confess to each other in their strange fantasies and loves that go beyond the usual standards.. The impetus to making the film was the book of the same name by the Russian religious philosopher Vasily Rozanov, who died 100 years ago. His treatise was devoted to the study of sexuality and its denial in Christianity. The film was made in the style of experimental films of the 1920s with a non-linear narration full of strange surrealistic images. He is black and white and devoid of dialogue. Filmed on film 16 mm of firm "Svema", released in the USSR. This added to his exoticism. The image was put to the music of Alexander Scriabin “The Poem of Ecstasy” (1907).

Babsi Adler

Babsi Adler is a magnificent character that represents the Slovenian drag scene. This short portrait documentary is built through a Halloween night with Babsi and their surroundings. In a conversation with a friend Babsi is open to share their personal thoughts and struggles.

Raja Bro

A sensitive heart-warming story of an Indian transman's acceptance, by himself and his family. Merlin, born as a girl, felt right from his childhood that he was trapped in the wrong gender.

The Twisted Slipper

With the help of his Fairy Drag Mother, a young barista breaks out of the humdrum of his hipster coffee shop life to find the dress and the man of his dreams. Hopefully his nagging stepmother and savage stepsisters don't get in the way.

Good Luck, Babe!

A child discovers a box of trinkets and letters from an affair their mother kept secret, prompting flashbacks to her relationship with a woman in the 1980s.

Teenage and Gay

A documentary that follows five British teenagers as they come out, capturing intimate first-hand experiences, and empathizing with them as they seek acceptance for their sexuality. From the 14-year-old footballer who describes herself as a ‘butch lesbian’ to the transgender boy forced out of home and school, the program features a cross-section of characters. Intimate, confessional, and raw, the film celebrates their bravery and exposes the ostracism and bullying they can suffer.

Outside the Lines

Three young queer people share their experiences on what it’s like to deviate from the straight cis-norm. Throughout the film, painful experiences make room for a more positive perspective, such as the overwhelming sense of connection with millions of other queer individuals worldwide or the freedom that arises as one can relinquish certain expectations. This so-called ‘queer-joy’ is being discovered, providing inspiring and moving insights.

Hideous

Musician Oliver Sim is the main guest of a talk-show that soon slides into a surreal journey of love, shame, and blood.

Good Stock On The Dimension Floor: An Opera

A collectively made filmic opera in 35 parts. The Black and predominantly queer art collective, an evolving line up of poets and artists from across the world, abstracts and reimagines opera in any traditional conception. Set to hip-hop, blues, noise, R&B and electronica, the piece uses the voice (chanting, singing, screaming; written by poet and activist Dawn Lundy Martin) as its primary tool, verbalising centuries of alienation, vulnerability and protest in the global African diaspora through its disruptive libretto.

África

Africa, a trans woman dedicated to musical representation and comic entertainment on Facebook exhibits her daily life through live broadcasts, having success and a large influx of viewers. This while she is getting ready for her special program in honor of her best friend Vicenta de Loris, since a year has passed since her life was taken from her.

A-Okay

Sex. Something that is part of human nature. Everyone does it and strives to have their happily ever after… Right? In a society where intimacy and romance are constantly everywhere, someone breaks from the mould after years of self-discovery. They send a letter to their past self full of their experiences and lessons learned, in the form of a short documentary. A-Okay brings attention to the hyper-sexualized and romanticized society we live in and how it’s expectations, stigmas, and stereotypes can be harmful to individuals on the aromantic and asexual spectrums.

Dream Boat

A cruise ship and 3,000 men – it is a universe without heteros and women that usually remains a mystery to the outside world. Once a year the Dream Boat sets sail for a cruise exclusively for gay men where most passengers are united by the wish to live life authentically as themselves in a protected place.

Vivre nos vies

Through the spoken stories and testimonies of 4 LGBTQ+ people over 40 years old about their lives, their joys, their hopes, their struggles, and their advice, this documentary aims to contribute to an archive, to the construction of a queer history. But also to the bridging of the communication gap between generations, showing young queer people that it is possible to have a long and happy life. What are the differences and similarities between their lived experience and the one of younger LGBTQ+ people? What can we learn from them and what should we aim to overcome? What links unify this 'community' and what debates split through it? But more than anything: what does it mean to grow old whilst being gay, lesbian, bi, trans, non-binary...? What does that look like? What does the future, which is sometimes so complicated to imagine, have on hold for us?

Queer My Friends

Queer My Friends portrays a very important chapter of Kang-won’s life: his coming out as gay and the changes he goes through from the eyes of his best friend Ah-hyun. This 30s coming-of-age buddy film draws how these two from such different backgrounds grow up together by questioning, exploring, and, of course, fighting each other. While Kang-Won struggles to embrace his sexuality, nationality, and identity, Ah-hyun asks herself what it means to find oneself and accept others for who they really are.

Queer Japan

Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to live unconventional lives in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ+ culture in contemporary Japan.

Synonymous With

A student's increasingly intimate line of questioning causes his interview with a local horror host to take a vulnerable turn.

How I Learned to Love the Numbers

How I Learned to Love the Numbers is a New York film and at the same time the study of a young man suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The Berlin filmmaker Oliver Sechting (37) and his co-director Max Taubert (23) travel to New York with the idea of documenting the art scene there. However, the project is quickly overshadowed by Oliver's OCD, and the two directors fall prey to a conflict that becomes the central theme of their film. Encounters with such artists as film directors Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), Ira Sachs (Keep The Lights On), and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) or the transmedia artist Phoebe Legere seem more and more to resemble therapy sessions. At last, Andy Warhol-Superstar Ultra Violet succeeds in opening a new door for Oliver.

Where Have All the Lesbians Gone?

Lesbian director Brigid McFall and lesbian photographer Vic Lentaigne create a series of intimate, revealing portraits of what it means to be lesbian in 2022, exploring why it is that so many young women who are sexually attracted to other women now prefer to identify as queer.

Queendom

In defiance of Russia’s anti-LGBTQ laws, a queer, 21-year-old artist risks her life performing in surreal costumes throughout Moscow. Jenna Marvin’s radical public performances blend artistry and activism in this SXSW documentary.

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution

A documentary on Queercore, the cultural and social movement that began as an offshoot of punk and was distinguished by its discontent with society's disapproval of the gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender communities.

John Cameron Mitchell & Stephen Trask: Nation of One

Far from Earth, tensions escalate between a feuding astronaut couple (Gnosis and ZanFagna). A video transmission from John Cameron Mitchell pushes them toward escaping the ship-- and each other. "Nation of One" is written by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask (creators of Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and will be found on part two of the benefit album "New American Dream" by John Cameron Mitchell and Friends.

Genderless

Everything is political, even something as insignificant as a bathroom. The struggle to occupy spaces represents the struggle to reaffirm one's very existence. This is why we explore why the creation of gender-neutral bathrooms in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters is so important in a country that leads in hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community.

Drag Queens em Cena: A Expressão de Almas Artísticas

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Sound It Out: The Untitled LGBTQIA Music Documentary

An edgy and unapologetic look at the growing impact that open LGBTQ music artists, and their straight allies, are having on the portrayal of sexuality and gender politics in music, and its affect on the normalizing of gay culture. Using artists personal experiences as a lens, we'll look at sexuality's influence on music and the role of social media in helping artists complicate mainstream expectations of identity. How far are artists willing to push their music, messages and imagery to challenge the way pop culture defines notions of sexuality, masculinity, femininity, gender and what it means to be queer?

El sueño

In an apartment, a party is in full swing. Sitting on a sofa, Perez is hypnotized by a group of four girls facing him.

Queerkamp

It takes courage to be a queer teenager at an LGBTQIA+ youth summer camp. Along with 65 other queer youngsters, Faas, Fano, Jeroen, and Finley are on their first summer camp, spending five intensive days of workshops that teach them how they can love themselves more. For the first time in their lives, the youths are surrounded by peers, all struggling with the same problems and feelings. As different as they are, they all share one thing: the need for contact and understanding. Mutual recognition of each other’s childhood or coming-out stories stirs up more emotions than they may have thought. Will this help them get closer to each other and eventually themselves?

Jeder Tag ein Kampf? Queere Menschen in Deutschland

Summer 2021: The Allianz Arena in Munich is to be lit up in rainbow colors for Germany's match against Hungary. UEFA forbids this - and Germany is in a rainbow frenzy in protest: landmarks are illuminated in color, rainbow flags are hoisted, and the country's own tolerance is celebrated. Germany, a paradise for queer people? Reporter Klaas-Wilhelm Brandenburg has had other experiences. "Die Story im Ersten" meets queer people in various phases of their lives: children at school, young people at work, senior citizens in nursing homes. We take stock after five years of "marriage for all": How equal are queer people in Germany? How tolerant is our society really?

Queen of New York

Welcome to a different kind of drag race! As NYC emerges from the chaos of 2020, Marti Cummings (they/them), an audacious and big-hearted drag queen, goes all out in a historic bid to become a City Councilperson. It’s one of the most hotly contested Council races in years, and Marti’s strongest competitor is Shaun Abreu, a tenants’ lawyer with deep roots in the district’s Latinx community. As these first-timers race to do the most good for their Upper Manhattan neighbors, they offer very different visions for Democratic politics – one in a suit and tie, the other in combat boots and floral print. As this immersive documentary reveals, Marti’s passion inspires queer activists and allies to change the political system. Their campaign becomes a community of its own, especially for Marti’s non-binary peers who have never before seen themselves represented.

Anhell69

A funeral car cruises the streets of Medellín, while a young director tells the story of his past in this violent and conservative city. He remembers the pre-production of his first film, a Class-B movie with ghosts. The young queer scene of Medellín is casted for the film, but the main protagonist dies of a heroin overdose at the age of 21, just like many friends of the director. Anhell69 explores the dreams, doubts and fears of an annihilated generation, and the struggle to carry on making cinema.

Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith

In his essay film, Jerry Tartaglia, longtime archivist and restorer of the film estate of queer New York underground, experimental film, and performance legend Jack Smith, deals less with Smith’s life than with his work, analyzing Smith’s aesthetic idiosyncrasies in 21 thematic chapters. It's a film essay about the artist’s work, rather than a documentary about his life. An unmediated vision of Jack Smith, an invitation to join him in his lost paradise.

How To Dress Like Me

Since 1979, Rose Chong Costumiers have been dealing in elaborate and vibrant maximalist attire for hire. In 40 years, it has established itself as an iconic and legendary Melbourne staple among the Inner-North's queer scene. But neither Rose Chong's nor fancy-dress are as simple as they first seem according to Dan, one of the long-time "Chongettes" who works there. When considered with care and attention, they reveal glittering ideas of play and fun and community. From a queer lens - or rather, a mirror - this unassuming costume shop is a place where one might begin to conceive truths about themselves and their identities. How to Dress Like Me is a 5-minute documentary that contends with the intersections of play, queerness, and clothes.

Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero

A remarkably intimate portrait of an artist on tour navigating identity, family, expectations, and acceptance, all while reflecting on his place within the legacy of Black, queer performers.

Neptune Frost

In the hilltops of Burundi, a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region's natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry.