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Director

Livingston, Jennie

Year

1990

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Director

Livingston, Jennie

Year

1990

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Director

Livingston, Jennie

Year

1990

Synopsis

They call themselves the Children. They are messengers, welfare recipients, salespeople, and prostitutes. By night they are Krystle and Blake Carrington. As black and hispanic gay men, the Children inhabit two worlds—an everyday world of discrimination and poverty, and the world of "Realness,” where through costume and competition, dance and inspired performance, they imitate and transcend the powerful fantasy media that excludes them. "It's like going through the Looking Glass," says one. "It's how being gay should be." Paris is Burning becomes firm friends with a number of the Children as they meet along the piers, where they exchange news and sex and practice voguing. Each of the Children belongs to the House that suits him best (the House of Chanel, the House of Saint Laurent, the House of Ninja, and others). Monthly fashion balls—the dramatic pivot of the film's disco-beat action and of the subculture itself—take place in Harlem or Brooklyn. Members of rival Houses talk about competing for trophies and cash prizes in categories such as High Fashion Eveningwear, Face, Model's Body, and most curious and serious of all, "Realness.” In the Realness category, drag queens try to pass for real women, butch queens for real men—that is, heterosexual men. (There are also subcompetition categories like Executive Realness and Schoolboy Realness.) As one of the judges explains, "If you can pass the trained eye and not give away the fact that you're gay, that's when it's Real.” What is a “real” women, what is a “real” man? Paris is Burning is a giddy celebration of this subculture, these contradictions. And if you're not interested in these questions, there's always the superglamorous costumes. Winner of the 1990 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary.

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Year

1990

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Year

1990

Synopsis

Musical/Amnesty/AIDS

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Year

1990

Synopsis

Mini-Series

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Year

1990

Synopsis

Right Wing, Right Off, Right Hons, Right? probes those gays who still vote Tory, or at least crave Conservatism in some form. Out-gay Tory ex-MP Matthew Parris argues the case for Margaret Thatcher’s "sexual tolerance"! In Luppies, upwardly-mobile dykes outline their aspirations with unladylike ambition. My Beautiful Lorgnette affectionately quizzes the phenomenon of the opera queen. The second part includes Walk On Bi —a catalog of the confusions and options created by self-declared bisexuals—and a report on Amnesty International's attitude to adopting gays as Prisoners of Conscience. Plus A Matter of Life and Death asks what it's like for gay men who have buried so many friends; one interviewee describes the film as a bold break-out from the "tyranny" of positive thinking: "I've said that AIDS was the best thing that's ever happened to me," he says, "But that was last year." Presenter: Communards' Richard Coles.

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Director

Chamberlain, Joy

Year

1990

Synopsis

Marguerite, a 45-year-old upper-class woman, returns to the family mansion to attend her mother's funeral. Flashback sequences reveal her emotionally impoverished childhood as the mature Marguerite roams the relic-filled rooms. Meanwhile, down the road, two lesbian lovers are thumbing a ride. Picked up by a man in a sedan, they smirk as he warns them against hitchhiking, alluding to grisly crimes committed in the area. "Go on, tell us about what happened," goads Theresa, while her girlfriend fondles her from the backseat. More surprises await us from the somewhat sociopathic couple. The driver stops to take a leak and they make off with the car. They arrive at Marguerite's house, breaking in through the french doors where she is playing the piano. It's intrigue at first sight, as Marguerite, dressed for defense, enjoys her first wet T-shirt experience. What follows will take even the seasoned dyke by surprise. Marguerite accompanies the couple to the nursery and dresses them in her old children’s clothes. Frocked in smocks, they trot off to dinner, grossing out the housekeeper who knows lines will be crossed at the supper table (and they are). Nocturne is reminiscent of Harold Pinter’s screenplay for The Servant. We’re not sure who’s controlling who. The threesome provoke and tease each other in ways that would put Tom Jones to shame. Further flashbacks open closet doors in Marguerite’s past, and we’re invited into a complex psychological reality that releases possibilities and passions for the heroine. At last, a film that describes a lesbian landscape full of contradiction, innuendo, and hauntings from a lesbian-positive point of view. Made for British TV, Nocturne has a tightly constructed (hour-long) plot, as well as characters we sympathize with, or love to hate, even when they turn on us.

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Director

Greyson, John

Year

1990

Synopsis

With musical numbers like "I Hate Straights" and a catfish playing the role of Bertold Brecht, The Making of "Monsters" explores the culture of antigay violence in North America.