Strip and War (2019)

The Human Face of Russia

Documentary on the USSR

Across the Rails

2021 was a turning point for Belarus and 6 Belarusian students - as well as for the city of Łódź, Poland, in which they found themselves. Across the rails of change and transformation, documenting a time that has not been before and will not repeat again. Heroes of the film have very different fates and experiences, but they are all connected by the place they found themselves in - the post-industrial and post-apocalyptic city, which becomes a part of their story and a hero of its own. Students, transport, quaters, youth, revolution, local apocalypse, changes and turns - they all mix in a documentary kaleidoscope 'Across the Rails'.

Boys on Film 18: Heroes

Boys On Film comes of age with uplifting and powerful tales recounting the lives of everyday heroes striving for their own identities and fighting for the right for us all to be ourselves. Volume 18: Heroes includes ten complete films: Dean Loxton's "Dániel" starring Csémy Balázs, Hilda Péter, and Henry Garrett… Niels Bourgonje's "Buddy" starring Daniel Cornelissen and Tobias Nierop… Tamara Shogaolu's animated "Half A Life"… Victor Lindgren's "Undress Me" starring Jana Bringlöv Ekspong and Björn Elgerd… Sam Ashby's "The Colour Of His Hair" starring Sean Hart and Josh O'Connor… Hope Dickson Leach's "Silly Girl" starring Ciara Baxendale, Mollie Lambert, and Jason Barker… Søren Green's "An Evening" starring Jacob Ottensten and Ulrik Windfeldt-Schmidt… Alejandro Medina's documentary "AIDS: Doctors And Nurses Tell Their Stories"… Kai Stänicke's "It's Consuming Me" with Volkmar Leif Gilbert… and Mikael Bundsen's "Mother Knows Best" starring Alexander Gustavsson and Hanna Ullerstam.

Strike a Pose

In 1990, seven young male dancers joined Madonna on her most controversial world tour. Their journey was captured in Truth or Dare. As a self-proclaimed 'mother' to her six gay dancers plus straight Oliver, Madonna used the film to make a stand on gay rights and freedom of expression. The dancers became paragons of pride, inspiring people all over the world to dare to be who you are. 25 years later, the dancers share their own stories about life during and after the tour. What does it really take to express yourself?

Stalin's Last Plot

January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.

Anniversary of the Revolution

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

I Am My Own Woman

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

A Morte de Narciso

Documentary about the work of photographer Alair Gomes, one of the first artists to introduce male nudity in Brazilian photography.

Gay Black Group

The formation of the Gay Black Group was a landmark in gay black history. Meeting at Gay's the Word, a bookshop in Bloomsbury, London, it provided a sounding board and support for gay and black communities of the 1980s.

Passage

Gabrielle and Yoan are 18 years old. Even though they both grew up in Temiscamingue, their aspirations are opposite. While Yoan wants to leave the area to break away from his loneliness and explore his homosexuality, Gabrielle is torn at the thought of going over a hundred kilometers away from home to carry on with her studies.

Urbanude

Michalis is wallking naked around the streets of Berlin.

Kenedi Is Getting Married

Kenedi is in a huge debt after building a house for his family. He finds himself searching for any kind of work to support himself, for as little as 10 EUR per day, a scarce amount to help him relief his debt. Ultimately, Kenedi decides to look for money in sex business. Initially offering his services to older ladies and widows, he expands his 'business' to offer sex to wealthy men. When he finds out about new liberal European laws on gay marriages, Kenedi sees prospects in looking for a "marriage material", to renew his search for a legal status in EU. The opportunity arises during EXIT Music Festival, when he meets Max, a guy from Munich. But will their promising relationship bring the solution to Kenedi's problems?

Boys on Film 23: Dangerous to Know

Boys on Film presents ten encounters from across the globe, where the dangerous allure of a risky attraction yields emotional results — proving that the age-old adage of taking the plunge is as relevant — and sexy — as ever before. The 10 short films are: My Uncle's Friend [O Amigo do Meu Tio] (2021); Budapest, Closed City [Budapest, zárt város] (2021); Eden (2020); Chaperone (2022); Break Me [Knus meg] (2018); By His Will [שעשני כרצונו] (2021); Red Ants Bite (2019); Jim (2022); Hornbeam (2022); Too Rough (2022).

Gay Porn: Guided Tour

An unusual journey into the heart of gay porn, a universe populated by a host of planets, which professionals commonly call niches. These are all fantasies of inclined tastes and libidos. Olivier Ghis tries to understand where these famous niches come from and what desires they meet.

Guilty of Loving: The Ordeal of Gays in Tunisia

The director meets Amir and Ramzi in a café in a small Tunisian town. They don't want to be seen there. They have to find a discreet place to talk. Like many other gay couples in Tunisia, Amir and Ramzi are living a nightmare since the Tunisian Revolution. With them, the director will discover the daily life of the Tunisian homosexual couples, even in the discrete parties organized in hotels of the country.

When Love Is Gay

Documentary about men who break the silence about their homosexuality. They talk about their difficulty to accept and to make others accept their difference, of the place of sensuality in their lives, of their fierce desire to love freely. A film that ,in celebrating the love of a young couple, proposes to break the sometimes negative image around the gay world.

The Soviet Union: A New Look

This film discusses conditions in the Soviet Union, including party activity and influence, the shortage of consumer goods, the roles of children and women, the status of religion, and the purpose of Soviet realist art.

Coming Out

Following a series of gay teen suicides, a deeply closeted student confronts his repressed sexuality in search of acceptance from his family, community, and himself.

Soviet Union: The Rise and Fall - Part 1

Historic Russian battles to repel invaders serve as prelude to the story of events that redrew the map of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia in the 20th century. Following the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution, Communist Russia faces the venom of Nazi aggression. 1940's film footage reveals the harsh reality of total war, as the Red Army and Soviet civilians alike confront a brutal and tenacious enemy. The following decades are darkened by tensions between the USSR and foreign powers, and violent measures taken to silence voices of dissent. Finally, the Soviet people's yearning for a freer society leads to accelerating reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the USSR.

Soviet Union: The Rise and Fall - Part 2

Historic Russian battles to repel invaders serve as prelude to the story of events that redrew the map of Eastern Europe and parts of Asia in the 20th century. Following the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution, Communist Russia faces the venom of Nazi aggression. 1940's film footage reveals the harsh reality of total war, as the Red Army and Soviet civilians alike confront a brutal and tenacious enemy. The following decades are darkened by tensions between the USSR and foreign powers, and violent measures taken to silence voices of dissent. Finally, the Soviet people's yearning for a freer society leads to accelerating reforms and the ultimate dissolution of the USSR.

CIA vs KGB: Battleground Berlin

For 50 years, Berlin was the symbol of the Cold War. The city at the heart of the intelligence war between the US and the Soviet bloc. Thousands of KGB or CIA, agents observed each other, cogs in the biggest information war in history.

Lance Loves Michael: The Lance Bass Wedding

On February 5, 2015, Lance Bass and Michael Turchin made television history when their wedding, which took place Dec. 20, 2014, premiered on E!. LANCE LOVES MICHAEL — a 90-minute special — follows the couple from the early stages of planning right up to their vows on the altar.

Mama's Boy

Traveling back to the places where he grew up, Dustin Lance Black explores his childhood roots, gay identity and close relationship with his mother, who overcame childhood polio, abusive marriages and Mormon dogma, while becoming Black’s emotional rock and, ultimately, the inspiration for his activism. With a wealth of personal photographs and candid memories from Black’s family, colleagues, and friends, this documentary embraces the personal to tell a universally hopeful tale of resilience and reconciliation through the power of love and shared stories.

Man with a Movie Camera

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

The Hippie Temptation

CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing "Dancin' in the Streets" on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park. The Hippie Temptation!

Oliver

A documentary about a gay nightclub performer with an especially lurid "Spider-man" act. Oliver is a female impersonator who supports his family by performing in Manila's gay bars.

Soviet Bus Stops

“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.

Women of the Gulag

Through unique and candid interviews the film tells the compelling and tragic stories of the six women – last survivors of the Gulag, the brutal system of repression and terror that devastated the Soviet population during the regime of Stalin.

Closing Gambit: 1978 Korchnoi versus Karpov and the Kremlin

The story of the 1978 World Chess Championship between the Soviet Communist Party's protege, Anatoly Karpov and the traitor and Soviet defector, Viktor Korchnoi. One of those instances in life where truth is stranger than fiction.

Race d'Ep!

"Race d’Ep!" (which literally translates to "Breed of Faggots") was made by the “father of queer theory,” Guy Hocquenghem, in collaboration with radical queer filmmaker and provocateur Lionel Soukaz. The film traces the history of modern homosexuality through the twentieth century, from early sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden to gay liberation and cruising on the streets of Paris. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Michel Foucault on the history of sexuality and reflecting the revolutionary queer activism of its day, "Race d’Ep!" is a shockingly frank, sex-filled experimental documentary about gay culture emerging from the shadows.

Palace for the People

The life and death of socialist architectural monsters. An epic fairy-tale in five chapters.

Disaster at Chernobyl

The explosion at Chernobyl was ten times worse than the Hiroshima bomb and was due to a combination of human error and imperfect technology. An account of the sixty critical minutes prior to the explosion of the nuclear power plant on the night of April 26, 1986.

Uncut

Freely drawing from a variety of film genres, including musicals, the sudsy melodramas and documentaries and combing them with a free-flowing narrative and bright pop-art sensibilities, this hard-hitting experimental romp from Canadian filmmaker John Greyson packs a political wallop while satirically comparing and contrasting the issues of censorship and circumcision. The tale centers on the exploits of three homosexuals named Peter. Peter Koosens is obsessed with the semi-scandalous behavior of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau while college student Peter Cort, ponders the significance and necessity of male circumcision. Peter Denham is an artist who seduces the other two and freely borrows from their work to make something of his own. Their exploits land the trio in prison after an operatic number (the police sing songs adapted from Bizet's Carmen).

Tom Bianchi's Men in Motion

This nicely made erotic video goes behind the scenes at a Tom Bianchi photo shoot for a sports spread. There are hot shots of the games and posing for the loving camera lens. Bianchi gives us some incisive interview moments with athletes in dance, basketball, wrestling, fitness training and triathlon. After the active photo session it's into the shower with these hunks and a nude photo session. A nice glimpse behind the scenes with the most prominent photographer of nude men in the business. One note is that Bianchi is one of the most handsome guys we've seen in his age bracket - perhaps it's because he loves his job so much, who wouldn't love to photograph beautiful men all day?

Until Porn Do Us Part

Eulália, a conservative Portuguese mother, found out that her son who emigrated to Germany has become Fostter Riviera, the internationally awarded first Portuguese gay porn actor. She suffers with the distance, sometimes toned down through the computer that has become her main source of information and communication with her son. This documentary focuses on the long journey of this mother towards acceptance and endeavour to get closer to her son.

The Red Tree

A powerful and poetic short film that tells the little known history of Italian gay men being arrested and exiled to a remote island during Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

#Familiar #Touch #Lost #Figures

Can we reinvent our lost queer histories? #Familiar #Touch #Lost #Figures is about queer ancestry and diaspora, a hybrid of cultural traditions and contemporary queer identity. It explores feelings of guilt and joy, and intimacy between femmes of colour.

An Army of Lovers

Documentary about the fight for LGBTQ-rights in Sweden during the 1970s.