LGBTQ+ Favorites

LGBTQ+ Favorites

30 Episodes

Proud, rebellious, colorful, intimate, and frank, these essential visions of LGBTQ+ life find boundary-pushing filmmakers turning the richness of the queer experience into indelible art. From taboo-shattering art-house classics to defining works of the 1990s New Queer Cinema explosion to contemporary showstoppers from emerging talents, these films represent just a sample of the wide world of queer cinema, but they offer a taste of its breadth, creativity, and defiance in the face of adversity.

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LGBTQ+ Favorites
  • All Shall Be Well

    Episode 1

    Directed by Ray Yeung • 2024 • Hong Kong
    Starring Maggie Li Lin-lin, Patra Au Ga-man, Tai Bo

    What happens to a lifetime of love when it collides with the harsh realities of a bureaucratic system that doesn’t recognize your relationship? That’s the question at the heart of this profoundly poignan...

  • Daughter’s Daughter

    Episode 2

    Directed by Huang Xi • 2024 • Taiwan
    Starring Sylvia Chang, Karena Lam, Winston Chao

    A stunning performance by Taiwanese-cinema legend Sylvia Chang anchors this elegant exploration of motherhood, grief, and regret from rising director Huang Xi. Executive-produced by Chang and filmmaker Hou Hsiao...

  • Fresh Kill

    Episode 3

    Directed by Shu Lea Cheang • 1994 • United States
    Starring Sarita Choudhury, Erin McMurtry, Abraham Lim

    A disturbingly prescient ecofeminist parable and a brain-wave-scrambling cyberpunk fantasia, the debut feature from new-media pioneer Shu Lea Cheang merges a bold vision of resistance with an ...

  • Misericordia

    Episode 4

    Directed by Alain Guiraudie • 2024 • France, Spain, Portugal
    Starring Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, Jacques Develay

    A web of secrets, suspicions, and desires ensnares the inhabitants of an insular French village in this tantalizing comic thriller from ever-audacious auteur Alain Guiraudie. Return...

  • The Aggressives

    Episode 5

    Directed by Daniel Peddle • 2005 • United States
    Starring Kisha Batista, Marquise Vilson, Octavio Sanders

    Filmed over the course of five years, this bold, candid documentary follows the journeys of six masculine-presenting, genderqueer New Yorkers who defy labels in their quest to live authentic...

  • Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later

    Episode 6

    Directed by Daniel Peddle • 2023 • United States

    Twenty-five years after Daniel Peddle’s groundbreaking documentary THE AGGRESSIVES introduced the world to an inspiring group of trailblazing transmasculine heroes, BEYOND THE AGGRESSIVES: 25 YEARS LATER catches up with four of the film’s original...

  • Orlando, My Political Biography

    Episode 7

    Directed by Paul B. Preciado • 2023 • France
    Starring Oscar-Roza Miller, Yanis Sahraoui, Liz Christin

    “Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.” Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography” as his starting point, academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Pr...

  • Regrouping

    Episode 8

    Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1976 • United States
    Starring Kathryn Bigelow, Ariel Bock, Marion Cajori

    While Lizzie Borden’s features BORN IN FLAMES and WORKING GIRLS have taken their place as landmarks of feminist cinema, her debut—the fascinating experimental documentary REGROUPING—has gone larg...

  • Pink Narcissus

    Episode 9

    Directed by James Bidgood • 1971 • United States
    Starring Don Brooks, Bobby Kendall, Charles Ludlam

    Working over the course of eight years in his downtown Manhattan loft, artist James Bidgood crafted this luxuriant queer fantasia, a crimson-saturated idyll of camp excess and erotic spectacle. Wh...

  • Kiss of the Spider Woman

    Episode 10

    Directed by Héctor Babenco • 1985 • United States, Brazil
    Starring William Hurt, Raúl Juliá, Sônia Braga

    Featuring indelible performances from Raul Julia and an Academy Award–winning William Hurt, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN is a work of radical compassion that boldly expands notions of love, gende...

  • Poison

    Episode 11

    Directed by Todd Haynes • 1991 • United States
    Starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan Norman

    Inspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Todd Haynes’s debut feature deftly interweaves a trio of transgressive tales—“Hero,” “Horror,” and “Homo”—that build towards a devastating climax. “Hero,” shot...

  • Benjamin Smoke

    Episode 12

    Directed by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen • 2000 • United States

    Far from a standard music documentary, Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen’s loving portrait of underground musician Benjamin Smoke—speed freak, drag queen, and a true outsider artist in every sense of the word—captures his singular personalit...

  • Totally F***ed Up

    Episode 13

    Directed by Gregg Araki • 1993 • United States
    Starring James Duval, Roko Belic, Susan Behshid

    A delirious mix of punk nihilism and deadpan irony, the first film in Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy puts an audaciously queer spin on Jean-Luc Godard’s classic MASCULIN FÉMININ. Across fifteen ...

  • Nowhere

    Episode 14

    Directed by Gregg Araki • 1997 • United States
    Starring James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton

    You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and sh...

  • Happy Together

    Episode 15

    Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1997 • Hong Kong
    Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing

    One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheun...

  • Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives

    Episode 16

    Directed by Mariposa Film Group • 1977 • United States

    More than forty years ago, in 1978, WORD IS OUT: STORIES OF SOME OF OUR LIVES startled audiences across the country when it appeared in movie theaters and on television. The first feature-length documentary about queer identity made by gay f...

  • Portrait of Jason

    Episode 17

    Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1967 • United States
    Starring Jason Holliday

    On the night of December 2, 1966, Shirley Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. For twelve straight hours, they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang,...

  • Je tu il elle

    Episode 18

    Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • France
    Starring Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire Wauthion

    Chantal Akerman’s first narrative feature is a startlingly vulnerable exploration of alienation and the search for connection. In a performance at once daringly exposed and enigmatic, Akerman pl...

  • Jubilee

    Episode 19

    Directed by Derek Jarman • 1978 • United Kingdom
    Starring Jenny Runacre, Little Nell, Toyah Willcox

    When Queen Elizabeth I asks her court alchemist to show her England in the future, she’s transported 400 years to a post-apocalyptic wasteland of roving girl gangs, an all-powerful media mogul, fa...

  • Querelle

    Episode 20

    Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1982 • Germany
    Starring Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau

    Conjured from the unholy meeting of two iconoclastic queer artists, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film audaciously raises Jean Genet’s controversial novel to the level of myth. In an expressi...

  • Born in Flames

    Episode 21

    Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1983 • United States
    Starring Honey, Adele Bertei, Jean Satterfield

    A blistering rallying cry issued loud, clear, and unapologetically queer, Lizzie Borden’s explosive postpunk provocation is a DIY fantasia of female rebellion set in America ten years after a revoluti...

  • The Times of Harvey Milk

    Episode 22

    Directed by Robert Epstein • 1984 • United States

    A true twentieth-century trailblazer, Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised peop...

  • Desert Hearts

    Episode 23

    Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States
    Starring Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau

    Donna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, DESERT HEARTS, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, ...

  • Mala Noche

    Episode 24

    Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1985 • United States
    Starring Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Ray Monge

    With its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant’s debut feature MALA NOCHE heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant’s hometown ...