Lgbt documentaries
All the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Queer [LGBTQ] Documentaries, Ranked
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A comprehensive compilation of LGBTQ+ feature and short subject documentaries — dealing with issues, history, art, significant personalities, and queer influence — and ranking all that I've seen so far, in celebration of Identity festival Month. [The unranked, unseen ones are listed in alphabetical arrange immediately following, as of this update starting at #]
NOTE: Not all listed documentaries here are pro-LGBTQ.
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10 documentaries to grasp the LGBTQ+ rights movement
This International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) we reflect on the historical and continued criminalisation of and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people around the world.
Despite hard-won successes, there still remains an overwhelming need to grow awareness and galvanise move amidst rising hate crimes, and a concerted and global legislative pushback against LGBTQ+ rights. Here are just some documentaries that illuminate the varied struggles, experiences, and perseverance of LGBTQ+ people across the globe, past and present.
1. Welcome to Chechnya ()
This heartbreaking and vital stare into the spiralling wave of homophobic violence and anti-gay purges spreading through Chechnya as of the late s. It follows LGBTQ+ Chechen refugees - mostly anonymised for their own safety - using hidden cameras as they fled out of Russia through a network of safehouses aided by activists and good samaritans.
2. Portrait of Jason ()
In this candid and spirited documentary interview - in
40 Essential LGBTQ+ Documentaries
(Photo by ©Off Colorless Productions/ Courtesy: Everett Collection.)
Queer cinema hinges on stories about the one and the many. Gay documentary films, though, can only ever offer both: portraits of individuals necessarily speak more broadly about the people they come to represent, while chronicles of a community (or a family, or a segment of the population) can only ever do so through individual testimonials and the singular vision of the filmmaker at hand. Films like Portrait of Jason and Tongues Untied,for instance, inform contemporary viewers as much about the individual stories about gay Black men presented on screen as about the communities (real and imagined) that their respective filmmakers brought to bear on their finished films. The following list of LGBTQ+ documentaries offers us windows into the past, allowing us glimpses into moments made worthy by their mere documentation.
Yet to say nonfiction filmmaking has merely documented the LGBTQ+ group is to trade short the work that some of the seminal documentaries listed bel
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Documentaries
- Before Stonewall: The Making of A Male lover and Lesbian Community
Traces the social, political and cultural history of homosexuality in America from the s to ; the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement after a police raid on Stonewall Inn, a homosexual bar in New York City; and the three-day riot that followed.
Rating: UR (Unrated) - Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin
A documentary examining the life of Bayard Rustin who, although one of the first "freedom riders," an adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, and an organizer of the Parade on Washington, was forced to play a background role in landmark civil rights events because of his sexuality.
Rating: NR (Not Rated) - Coby
A small town smack bang in th