George Elkind
The New Queer Cinema Movement Paved the Way for Today's Mainstream LGBTQ+ Films. But at What Cost?
“We’re not like them,” says one man to another, laying atop him on a dirty roadside. “We don’t have as much time — so we’ve got to grab life by the balls and go for it.”The top in question is Luke [...]
The Power of the Dog' Doesn't Idealize Queerness and Is Better for It
Growing acceptance has created a new suite of possibilities for queer storytelling in mainstream films. The sly, charged and freely oppositional work of the New Queer Cinema that dominated Hollywood in the late '80s and early '90s (itself influenced [...]
Trans, Non-Binary Voices in Focus as Hamtramck's Trans Stellar Film Fest Puts Queer Artists First
The return to safe and comfortable live events has been a bumpy road for most everyone after many months of Covid-related ups and downs. For the organizers behind the fifth annual Trans Stellar Film Festival, a day-long screening event focused on [...]
Why You Don't Want to Miss This Classic Hong Kong Queer Film in Hamtramck
Just a few years before breaking hearts and brains around the world with his masterpiece "In the Mood for Love," Wong Kar-wai premiered his exceptional, lone queer romance. That film, 1997's "Happy Together," plays this Thursday and Saturday at [...]
Queer Community Endures Onscreen During the 20th Anniversary of AAFF's Out Night
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is going online March 23-28 for its 59th edition showcasing experimental works. But 2021 also marks the 20th anniversary of its LGBTQ-focused program "Out Night," coming to you virtually on March 25. A home for the [...]
Dearborn Native's 'Breaking Fast' Film Features Queer Ramadan Love Story
American films about queerness, Islam and Arab identity are relatively rare. Rarer still are ones that don't treat these two identities' overlap as a social or personal problem to be solved: an implicit tension fraught with hardship. All of this [...]
Sundance Was Always on the Cutting Edge of Queer Filmmaking. In 2021, It Still Is.
Sundance's slate of queer films has grown steadily over the years, as has the scale of the increasingly star-studded festival itself. At its founding in 1985, it wasn't the first festival to heavily feature queer-focused works — that would be [...]