Tangerine (2015) by Sean Baker
Friday, September 15, 2017 - LGBTQ cinema has often been a cinema of outsiders. Which makes sense, considering that mainstream movie culture has long been dominated by a conservative, narrow, and overwhelmingly normative heterosexual understanding of gender and sexual identity.
But in the nearly 50 years since the Stonewall rebellion and the Gay liberation movement of the early 1970s, movies by and about LGBTQ people have flourished as a substantial and diverse subgenre of American cinema. From the experimental, abstract lesbian cinema of Barbara Hammer (Dyketactics) to the lyrical character studies of Ira Sachs (Love is Strange), LGBTQ cinema in this country has and continues to explore life, love, gender, sexuality, and identity, all too often formed in the face of broader societal prejudices.
In celebration of the start of New Haven PRIDE Weekend, here are three recommendations for movies that explore LGBTQ life in this country, focusing on stories and characters that refuse the limitations that American cultural norms around gender and sexual identity may try to foist upon them.