Love, Tony

1993

Bloodifies the revenge of a gay-bashing victim, and features a microcameo by RuPaul.

Sharandak, Natasha

1993

Revealing interviews with six Russian lesbians who convey the hardships and joys of being a lesbian in Russia. While Tatjana speaks hesitantly about her sexuality, believing it to be a private matter, Muchabat charmingly flirts with the filmmaker, "We'll make the movie after we have sex, okay?" This fascinating documentary touches on a range of issues including women's prisons, transsexuality, lesbian and gay community organizing, coming out and homophobia. Under Article 121—which criminalizes homosexuality—lesbians and gay men in Kiev face the threat of imprisonment, blackmail, government harassment, and family rejection.

Hunter, Neil

1993

Tell Me No Lies is a jaunty, bittersweet comedy about the naiveté of some closeted English students; "I think Jane knows I'm gay," says an anxious one to his after-hours boyfriend, "She's reading Genet and she said she'd lend it to me." Better Genet than E.M. Forster.

Krause, Ute

1993

Take Me Back to Cairo is a women-only reverie about an inhibited middle-aged woman who wins a trip to the Oriental Baths.

Winkler, Robert

1993

A clever condom cliffhanger.

1993

Kaufman, Jennifer

1993

Strings recounts the story of Ani, a bi musician and her gang of friends. When Ani's friend dies of AIDS she decides it's time to move away, but her girlfriend and her boyfriend don't want her to leave.

Lipinska, Christine

1993

Set in France at the end of World War II, this gem of a film is the story of Virginie and Anne, 17 year-olds who have just come back to their village from boarding school. Their friends Jean-Claude and Alain come back from the war injured and disillusioned. There is no longer any innocence in their vision of the world. War, suffering and horror have changed them all. Jean-Claude desperately wants to marry Virginie, but she is in love with Anne, and writes profusely of her love in her diary. In an effort to repel Jean-Claude’s advances, Anne tries to convince him that Virginie is in love with another boy. She erases her own name from Virginie’s diary entries and fills in the name Paul. But when Alain gets a hold of the diary, he’s not just put off – he threatens to read it to the whole village.

Raymond, James

1993

A charming rendition of Dorothy Parker's Standard of Living; a captivating period piece about Anabelle and Midge and a very special game.

D’Auria, Mark

1993

Deeply moving and personal, Smoke uses minimal language, a stylized vision, and icons drawn from a Roman Catholic childhood to construct a dark and penetrating dream. Not since Eraserhead has a film evoked a world as disturbed, haunted, and weirdly erotic. Michael is an alienated loner with a penchant for fiftysomething men, who works as a bathroom attendant in a fancy Manhattan hotel. Submerged in a self-deprecating search for a father figure, he pursues a married detective (whom we never see), and is in turn pursued by a mafia-type ex-boyfriend who bullies and intimidates him throughout the film. Resisting his mother’s wishes to attend his brother’s birthday, Michael goes to church for the first time in years. There, something happens that sets off hallucinogenic flashbacks to his youth, when he and his brother suffered from high fever. In the present day Michael’s life starts to take on an even more surrealistic quality. Religious, erotic, obsessive, and inescapable, Smoke envelops the viewer with a frightening passion that is simultaneously empty and full of meaning, beautiful and repulsive. Like a bad seed planted within the mind of a child, Michael’s life unfurls into a relentless and seductive series of images that absorb any other reality.