Join DPL in celebrating the contributions of LGBTQ+ people throughout history and today. Check out these excellent films by LGBTQ+ creators!
In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild English coastline. She hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself. When one such tourist arrives in Lyme, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Despite their differences, it is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.
Two women from very different backgrounds find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. As conventional norms of the time challenge their undeniable attraction, an honest story emerges to reveal the resilience of the heart in the face of change.
In this new restoration of the iconic New Queer Cinema classic, Derek Jarman offers a postmodern take on Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan drama. Pleasure-seeking King Edward II sets the stage for a palace revolt by taking as a lover the ambitious Piers Gaveston - who uses his favor in bed to wield political influence - sending the gay pair from the throne to a terminal torture dungeon.
Divine, director John Waters' larger-than-life muse, engulfs the screen with charisma as Dawn Davenport, the living embodiment of the film's lurid mantra, 'Crime is beauty, ' who progresses from a teenage nightmare hell-bent on getting cha-cha heels for Christmas to a fame monster whose egomaniacal impulses land her in the electric chair.
Blu-Ray disc only
Totally F***ed Up: "Across fifteen jagged episodes, Totally F***ed Up plunges headlong into the lives of a group of queer, disaffected Los Angeles teenagers who form a kind of make-shift family as they navigate desire and heartbreak, societal and familial rejection, and the alienation of growing up gay in an era of relentless moralizing.
The Doom Generation: When they inadvertently link up with a dangerously alluring drifter, a chilled-out Cali bro and his spiky, foulmouthed girlfriend find themselves on an increasingly violent, kinky, and darkly comic journey in which erotic tensions rise along with the body count.
Nowhere: On the day when the world is foretold to end, a group of terminally horny, disillusioned, zonked-out teens in Los Angeles see their lives explode in a glitter bomb of drugs, sex, death, and alien abduction. Bisexual lust, vaporizing Valley girls, sinister televangelists, nipple-ring S&M, murder by Campbell's-soup can--Araki folds it all into an anarchic orgy that brings his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy to an explosively caustic close.
Blu-Ray disc only
Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere are also available streaming on Kanopy
A Korean woman who is hired as handmaiden to a young Japanese lady is secretly plotting with a conman to defraud her of her large inheritance.
Based on the long-running New York smash hit, this film is a high-powered rock musical that tells the hilarious but emotional tale of a German glam-rock diva on a journey to find love and stardom in her new home, a trailer park in Kansas!
Based on the true story of con artist Steven Jay Russell, this biographical black comedy follows Steven (Jim Carrey) as he transitions from a small-town businessman to a flamboyant white-collar criminal. After being imprisoned, he falls in love with fellow inmate Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor). Determined to be with Phillip, Steven orchestrates a series of elaborate prison escapes.
The story of Erasmus and Paul, a bickering gay couple whose life is turned inside out when a ten year old boy shows up at their door claiming to be Erasmus' grandson. Neither Paul, nor Erasmus, are ready to give up their extravagant lifestyles to be parents, but maybe this little kid has a thing or two to teach them about the value of family.
Randy is a low economic class lesbian living with other lesbians including her aunt. Evie is a wealthy, popular girl with a boyfriend. When Evie befriends Randy, she begins to feel a passion for her she's never felt before.
Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou's criminal family.
Blu-Ray disc only
A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.
Mike and Scott, two young male prostitutes from different backgrounds, embark on a quest to find Mike's mother.
At age 8, Neil and Brian played on the same baseball team in their small Kansas hometown. Now 10 years later, Neil is a hustler and Brian a nervous introvert who believes he has been abducted by aliens. As their lives intersect, they discover a shared past shrouded in mystery.
Blu-Ray disc only
Dylan lives an isolated life in rural New Mexico, working odd jobs to support his family. He accepts a gig at a ranch built by a group of queer rodeo performers, where he becomes entwined in the life of Sky, a talented barrel racer and free spirit. While working together in the breathtaking expanse of the Southwest, they contend with the undeniable forces of nature, family, and love.
The revelatory and assured feature debut by Dee Rees is a coming-of-age tale of a queer Black woman navigating the expression of her gender and sexual identities, built around a beautifully layered performance from Adepero Oduye.
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, it 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.
France, 1760. Marianne is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young woman who has just left the convent. Because she is a reluctant bride-to-be, Marianne arrives under the guise of companionship, observing Héloïse by day and secretly painting her by firelight at night. As the two women orbit one another, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse first moments of freedom. Héloïse portrait soon becomes a collaborative act of and a testament to their love.
The prolific, ever-provocative Joseph Losey, blacklisted from Hollywood and living in England, delivered a coolly modernist shock to the system of that nation's cinema with this mesmerizing dissection of class, sexuality, and power. A dissolute scion of the upper crust finds the seemingly perfect manservant to oversee his new London townhouse. But not all is as it seems, as traditional social hierarchies are gradually, disturbingly destabilized.
Blu-Ray disc only
A near college graduate, Danielle, rushes to meet her neurotic parents at a shiva. Danielle's day takes an unexpected turn when she discovers her ex-girlfriend, her sugar daddy, his wife, and their crying baby are also in attendance. As the day unfolds, Danielle struggles to keep up different versions of herself, fend off pressures from her family and confront her insecurities without losing it.
A collection of documentary films directed by Marlon Riggs which discuss the experiences of black homosexual men living in the United States in the late twentieth century.
3 Short Films by Marlon T. Riggs available streaming on Kanopy
After the death of his longtime partner, a British college professor struggles to find meaning in his life. As he dwells in the past, he begins to contemplate suicide. A series of events and encounters will lead him to question if there really is a meaning to his life after all.
En route from New York City to Hollywood for a drag queen beauty pageant, Noxeema, Vida and Chi Chi are stranded in a tiny Midwestern town when their 1967 Cadillac breaks down. When their glitz and glamour wake up the sleepy local citizens, the stage is set for an outrageously funny weekend.
The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl's own life as she navigates a new relationship.
A fun and tender story about friendship and the complications of young love. Leo is a blind teenager who's fed up with his overprotective mother and the bullies at school. Looking to assert his independence, he decides to study abroad to the dismay of his best friend, Giovana. When Gabriel, the new kid in town, teams with Leo on a school project, new feelings blossom in him that make him reconsider his plans.