Best gay films of all time
The 50 Best LGBTQ+ Movies
50) The Living End (1992)
"Fuck The World." The motto of The Living End's protagonists might stand as a slogan for the whole of filmmaker Greg Araki's career. A key shitkicker in the early '90s Fresh Queer Cinema movement, Araki took a baseball bat to hetero-normative culture and explored gay life on the margins during Bush's administration in films by turns funny, frank and anguished. The Living End is his best picture, a so-called 'gay Thelma & Louise', as motion picture critic Jon (Craig Gilmore) and drifter Luke (Mike Dytri), both diagnosed as HIV-positive ("the Neo-Nazi Republican final solution," says Jon about AIDS), kill a homophobic cop and travel on the lam, offing any bigot who position in their way. Rather than pity themselves, these characters unleash their nihilism on the world, tempered by a kind of freewheeling anarchy and enhanced by Araki's eye-catching images and jump cuts. As the film's dedication puts it, it's a punch in the gut to "a Big White Property full of Republican fuckheads".Buy on Amazon UK
49) Go Fish (1994)
Made in 1994 – the same y
The 30 Best LGBTQ+ Movies of All Time, Ranked
Cinema lovers should always compete to celebrate diversity in film. It might've taken long - too prolonged, in fact - but cinema is becoming more inclusive, celebrating stories about every identity in the wide and colorful sexual spectrum. Going back to the New Hollywood Age, stories about LGBTQ+ people have been around, often standing as groundbreaking and pioneering efforts, especially at a time when such films remained controversial and scarce.
Nowadays, representation is much healthier and standardized, with writers, directors, and producers making real and tangible efforts to increase Gay presence in mainstream cinema. Fortunately, their efforts include paid off. From certified classics about the seemingly never-ending struggles facing the community to lighthearted comedies about the nuances of gay life, these tries represent landmark achievements in representation and stand as the best LGBTQ+ films of all time.
30 'Bottoms' (2023)
Directed by Emma Seligman
Taking an LGBTQ+ approach to the classic style of raunchy, over-the-top coming-of-age romcoms t
Cinema based on LGBTQ+ issues has become mainstream in the 21st Century, with films like Moonlight, A Fantastic Woman, and 120 BPM heading a much-required discourse on queer individuality politics and representation. But, if we look at the history of Diverse cinema back in the 20th Century, we would see how this inclusion came into being.
During the classical Hollywood era from the early 1920s to the late ‘50s, homosexuality was only understood through propagating stereotypes and reinforcing them through innuendos. Homosexuals were perceived to exhibit feminine features such as being soft-spoken, moving about in a “dainty” fashion, or being physically weaker than the male protagonist. In 1980 “Cruising” was released that featured a murderous psychopath among an S&M New York subculture where there was a direct link between gay insinuations and crime.
Considering these facts, where is the balance between depicting a queer antagonist and LGBTQ visibility? Can evil characters be queer without the filmmakers being perceived as homophobic? This list takes a look at the films that have shaped the mainstream conception about LGBTQ issues through a variety of topics revolving
The 30 Best LGBTQIA+ Films of All Time
In this first major critical survey of LGBTQIA+ films, over 100 film experts including critics, writers and programmers such as Joanna Hogg, Mark Cousins, Peter Strickland, Richard Dyer, Nick James and Laura Mulvey, as well as past and present BFI Flare programmers, have voted the Top 30 LGBTQIA+ Films of All Time. The poll’s results represent 84 years of cinema and 12 countries, from countries including Thailand, Japan, Sweden and Spain, as adv as films that showed at BFI Flare such as Orlando (1992), Stunning Thing (1996), Weekend (2011) and Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013).
The winner is Todd Haynes’ award-winning Carol, closely followed by Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, and Hong Kong intimate drama Happy Together, directed by Wong Kar-wai, in third place. While Carol is a surprisingly recent clip to top the poll, it’s a feature that has moved, delighted and enthralled audiences, and looks set to be a modern classic.
“The festival has drawn-out supported my work,” said Haynes, “from Poison and Dottie Gets Spanked in the early 1990s through to Carol which is screening on 35mm later this week in BFI Flare’s Best of Year programme. I’m so pr
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