Celebrate LGBT+ History Month with our list of eight unmissable LGBT+ docs, from classics such as Paris Is Burning to recent releases such as Truman & Tennessee and Ailey.
HALSTOn (director’s cut)
America’s first superstar designer, Halston rose to international fame in the 1970s, creating an empire and personifying the dramatic social and sexual revolution of the last century. Reaching beyond the glitz and glamour, acclaimed filmmaker Frédéric Tcheng reveals Halston’s profound impact on fashion, culture, and business. Halston captures the epic sweep of the life and times of the legendary designer Roy Halston Frowick, the man who set women free with his unstructured designs and strove to “dress all of America.” Framing the story as an investigation featuring actress and writer Tavi Gevinson as a young archivist diving into the Halston company records, Tcheng expertly weaves rare archival footage and intimate interviews with Halston’s family, friends and collaborators including Jacqueline Kennedy, Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol and Iman. What results is a behind-the-headlines look into the thrilling struggle between Halston’s artistic legacy and the pressures of big business.
Ailey
Alvin Ailey was a visionary artist who found salvation through dance. An immersive profile of ground-breaking and influential choreographer Alvin Ailey, founder of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Sensorial and archival-rich, AILEY captures the brilliant and enigmatic man who, when confronted by a world that refused to embrace him, was determined to build one that would.
TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION
This is a story of two of the greatest writers of the past century, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, who are examined in a dialogue that stretches from their early days of friendship to their final, unsparing critiques of each other. Giving life to the dialogue and a physicality to their relationship, Jim Parsons is Capote and Williams is Zachary Quinto; both are icons and yet anti-heroes, in an era that has become glutted with one-named celebrities: it’s time for a return to the originals. The two men themselves, as they lived their own life stories, embody the present more than the subjects they confronted in their works.
THE TIMES OF Harvey Milk
Operating from his camera store in San Francisco's Castro district, charismatic Harvey Milk is defeated three times before being elected to the city's Board of Supervisors, making him California's first openly gay public official. On the job he meets fellow supervisor Dan White, a homophobic ex-fireman with whom Milk develops a troubled working relationship. White grows increasingly disgruntled, resigns from his position and subsequently assassinates both Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
xy chelsea
XY CHELSEA tells the historic story of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, whose 35-year sentence in an all-male maximum-security prison was commuted by President Obama in 2017. XY CHELSEA is the journey of her fight for survival and dignity, and her transition from prisoner to a free woman.
paris is burning
The 80s seen through the eyes of NYC’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag ball scene, an intimate portrait of rival fashion “houses,” from fierce contests for trophies, to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza. Made by Livingston over seven years, Paris is Burning premiered at Film Forum in 1991 for a blockbuster 6-month run.
THE CASE AGAINST 8
A behind-the-scenes look inside the historic case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The high-profile trial first makes headlines with the unlikely pairing of Ted Olson and David Boies, political foes who last faced off as opposing attorneys in Bush v. Gore. The film also follows the plaintiffs, two gay couples who find their families at the centre of the same-sex marriage controversy. Five years in the making, this is the story of how they took the first federal marriage equality lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court.
welcome to chechnya
From Academy Award-nominated director David France comes Welcome to Chechnya, a powerful and eye-opening documentary about a group of activists risking their lives to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ persecution in the repressive and closed Russian republic of Chechnya. With unfettered access and a commitment to protecting anonymity, this documentary exposes Chehnya’s underreported atrocities while highlighting a group of people who are confronting brutality head-on. The film follows these LGBTQ activists as they work undercover to rescue victims and provide them with safe houses and visa assistance to escape persecution.