This Pride Month explore a powerful lineup of LGBTQIA+ documentaries that spotlight queer voices, untold histories, and stories of love, resilience, and identity.
QUEENDOM
Jenna, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes made from junk and tape, and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of Magadan, a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Jenna is only 21. She stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism. By doing that, she wants to change people’s perception of beauty and queerness and bring attention to the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. The performances—often dark, strange, evocative, and queer at their core — are a manifestation of Jenna’s subconscious. But they come at a price.
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 - Film Forum.
I’M YOUR VENUS
The 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning introduced the world to the superstars of the ballroom scene. Tragically, Venus was killed during its making. Today’s members of the House of Xtravaganza, her chosen family in New York, join forces with her biological band of brothers in New Jersey to seek justice. In doing so, they also discover a greater mutual understanding of her life and legacy. - Zorian Clayton BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival.
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.
KIKI
25 years after Paris Is Burning introduced the art of voguing to the world, Kiki revisits New York City’s thriving underground ballroom scene. It’s a larger-than-life world in which LGBTQ youths of color are empowered by staging elaborate dance competitions that showcase their dynamic choreography, fabulous costumes, and fierce attitude. It’s also a safe haven for struggling, at-risk teens who find acceptance, support, and friendship within the Kiki community. Granted intimate access to the scene, filmmaker Sara Jordenö introduces viewers to some of Kiki culture’s most prominent personalities, going beyond the glamour of the balls to highlight the serious challenges facing queer black and Latino young people. Bringing together heartrending personal stories with incredible displays of creative expression, Kiki is “exhilarating…an indelible, must-see ode to gay New York” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times).
Directed by two-time Grammy nominee D. Smith, KOKOMO CITY takes up a seemingly simple mantle — to present the stories of four Black transgender sex workers in New York and Georgia. Shot in striking black and white, the boldness of the facts of these women’s lives and the earthquaking frankness they share complicate this enterprise, colliding the everyday with cutting social commentary and the excavation of long-dormant truths.
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.
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.
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.