1987

Franchini, Frankie

1993

A short video about falling in love.

Butler, Kenneth

1987

A documentary about the 1967 Sexual Offences Act in England, which decriminalized homosexuality between consenting males over the age of twenty-one.

McAnally, Conor

1987

Shot in the U.S. for Irish television, AIDS: A Priest's Testament is the story of Father Bernard Lynch, an Irish-born priest and psychotherapist who set up an AIDS ministry in New York. Father Lynch is a daring, eloquent, and passionate missionary who discusses with startling honesty the pressures that have brought him close to the edge of his physical and spiritual limits as he conducts his ministry.

Friedberg, Lionel

1987

Pieter-Dirk Uys is a South African female impersonator/caricaturist whose finely-wrought satirical touring show elucidates apartheid while lampooning it. Uys walks a thin line between censorship and arrest as he occasionally steps out of characters that include P.W. Botha, Desmond Tutu, and Margaret Thatcher to deliver pointed attacks on apartheid and the South African government. Uys’s popularity with both white and black audiences insulates him somewhat from government interference, but he describes his balancing act as being "like doing the tango in front of a firing squad." Across the Rubicon brilliantly portrays the humor and grace with which Uys makes his contribution to the fight against apartheid.

Ford, Phillip R.

1986

Tonge, Roger

1986

In most instances of banned or censored TV tales, the outcry is often more imaginative than the acutal film. Two of Us is a rare rule-breaker; an atypical tale of working-class teens who cross the fine line from friendship to sex, it's both austere and sensual. Filmed in 1986 as part of a BBC school series, with transmission postponed in the light of Thatcherite concern over sex education, and then delayed further during the drawing up of Section 28, Britain's legislation which forbids local councils from "promoting homosexuality," Two of Us was finally aired on public TV in March 1988 at an unusually late hour, with two scenes abridged—the end (which suggests that Phil returns to Mathew) and an earlier embrace (amended by adding T-shirts and erasing a quick kiss). Fortunately, this special festival version will include the T-shirts off and the kiss in.

Onodera, Midi

1986

Onodera, Midi

1986

A striking split screen is used throughout the three scenes that make up this provocative film, which deals with communication, sexuality, and alienation. In Scene One a lesbian and a straight woman discuss their planned sexual encounter. Scene Two is an extended overhead shot of two men who meet in a bathroom stall. Scene Three depicts phone sex between a man and a woman.

Schneider, Paul

1986

Cleverly written and brilliantly cast, Something Special is a Hollywood teen transgender comedy about a girl who gets to be a boy. Try to imagine an ABC Afterschool Special with a queer sensibility and a sophisticated sense of humor—Something Special is super fun for boys and girls, and for girls who want to be boys. Milly Niceman gets her "deepest, darkest heart's desire" when she wishes on a magical Indian eclipse powder. She wakes in the middle of the night to discover she's grown "a guy's thing down there." When Mr. and Mrs. Niceman tell her she must choose between being a boy or a girl, she asks innocently, "Can't I be both?" As Muddy Waters sings “Mannish Boy” on the soundtrack, Milly becomes Willy and learns what it means to be a boy: his girlfriend develops a new kind of interest in him, and so does Willy's new pal Alfie (a differently abled boy who refers to his wheelchair as a lunar module). When Alfie confesses his "unnatural desires," Willy goes for the hetero option and decides he wants to be a girl again. Wishing upon a star does the trick, and Alfie and Milly go off together as happy hets.  Although the film ultimately doesn't allow for homosexuality as an option, it plays extensively on homoerotic potentials, and has a blast with traditional gender roles. Patty Duke gives an outstanding performance as Mrs. Niceman, and Pamela Seagall is uncannily butch and boyish as Willy (and as Milly).  Briefly released in 1986, Something Special quickly disappeared from view and has been unseen theatrically since.