Fabulous

Ninja is famous around the world for her fierce ballroom performances, but she is not as well-known in her native country of French Guyana. But a trip home to teach a workshop might change that.

Paris Is Burning

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.

Black Is… Black Ain’t

African-American documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs was working on this final film as he died from AIDS-related complications in 1994; he addresses the camera from his hospital bed in several scenes. The film directly addresses sexism and homophobia within the black community, with snippets of misogynistic and anti-gay slurs from popular hip-hop songs juxtaposed with interviews with African-American intellectuals and political theorists, including Cornel West, bell hooks and Angela Davis.

Tongues Untied

Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the "Institute of Snap!thology," where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap.

Poly-Love

A documentary that approaches polyamory from the intimate point of view of an Afro-American family who decided to live an authentic life without denying the option of diversity in their love and family.

Kelet

Kelet is a twentysomething black trans woman, whose greatest dream is to be on the cover of Vogue magazine. For the Finnish-born and Manchester-raised Kelet, such models as Naomi Campbell and Iman served as role models giving her strength – and during the darkest times, kept her alive. After coming out, then 19-year-old Kelet was cut off from her family and she moved back to Finland on her own.

Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back

Maurice Hines, a charming, gay African-American entertainer navigates the complications of show business while grieving the loss of his more famous, often estranged younger brother, tap dance legend Gregory Hines.

Game Face

Game Face shows the quest to self-realization of LGBT athletes and the acceptance in society. The film follows athletes during their coming out process, and sheds light on the obstacles LGBT sports players deal with throughout their career.

Portrait of Jason

Interview with Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne. House-boy, would-be cabaret performer, and self-proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked, pill-popped view of what it was like to be black and gay in 1960s United States. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Milestone Films in 2013.

Check It

Fed up with being pushed around, a group of gay and trans teens of color form a gang and fight back on the brutal streets of Washington D.C. They call their gang ‘Check it’ and this group of one-time victims of bullying, rape and abuse have turned the tables on anyone trying to hurt them. The group formed to provide its members safety in numbers and let people know that if they jump a queer kid in D.C., they may get beaten into a coma. This raw and intimate portrait follows three childhood friends as they struggle to survive and claw their way out of gang life through an unlikely avenue: fashion.

Kenyatta: Do Not Wait Your Turn

An inspiring love story about a self-described “poor, gay, black man from North Philly” on his historic run for the United States Senate. But this race is about more than taking on the political competition. It’s about taking on an entire system.

Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution

From the sweaty basement bars of 70s New York to the glittering peak of the global charts, how disco conquered the world - its origins, its triumphs, its fall and its legacy.

Bicha Preta

A short film that gives voice and space for LGBTQIA+ blacks to express themselves freely, by reporting and documenting stories which are transformative for the viewer, proposing the correlation and criticism of two forms of social oppression: homophobia and machismo.

The L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin

Gay women living in the Deep South of the United States share stories of the bigotry, sexism, intimidation, and racism that confronts them in a part of the country known for its culture of Christian conservatism.

How Do I Look

The icons from the "Harlem Drag Balls" are influencing the biggest stars in pop culture for decades and they are telling their untold stories of their time. The creative lifestyle, fierceness and fabulousness, is the ultimate challenge in fashion, on the runway and dance floor for recognition and fame. Wolfgang Busch is capturing the creative way society's disenfranchised express themselves through movement and creativity.

Bill T. Jones: Still/Here

Bill Moyers and filmmaker David Grubin give viewers a rare glimpse into dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones’s highly acclaimed dance Still/Here. At workshops around the country, people facing life-threatening illnesses are asked to remember the highs and lows of their lives, and even imagine their own deaths. They then transform their feelings into expressive movement, which Jones incorporates into the dance performed later in the program. For this documentary, Jones demonstrates the movements of his own life story: his first encounter with white people, confusion over his sexuality, his partner Arnie Zane’s untimely death from AIDS, and Jones’s own HIV-positive status.

Man Made

From adoption and homelessness to navigating relationships and overcoming self-harm, the four transmen in MAN MADE all have something else in common: they are all bodybuilders. Through the lens of FTMFitCon, the world’s only FTM bodybuilding competition, we delve into the lives of Dominic, Rese, Mason, and Kennie as they define what it means to be a man while contextualizing that definition through the social, racial, and economic realities of their lives. For the men of MAN MADE, it’s not about winning—it’s about stepping on stage and being seen for everything they are.

The Beauty President

In 1992, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, activist Terence Alan Smith made a historic bid for president of the United States as his drag queen persona Joan Jett Blakk. Today, Smith reflects back on his seminal civil rights campaign and its place in American history.

QUIMERA

PAJUBÁ - Vivendo a Interseccionalidade

"Pajubá" is a language created by black LGBTs as a mode of resistance. Given this, the present short film seeks to rescue the reality of people who experience in their own skin the strength of intersectionality between race, gender and sexuality in the São Francisco Valley region.