LGBTQ+ characters have been in production almost for as extended as the form has existed, but the way they were represented and who got to inform their stories has changed dramatically in the past century. This pride month, we’re celebrating queer cinema with a variety of films from throughout the decades, so I mind I’d highlight some of the unique titles on hand and how they express different milestones in lgbtq+ representation on film. View our full Queer Cinema collection for June here.
Johnny Guitar ()
From to , the Motion Picture Performance Code (or Hays Code as it’s often known) specifically forbid homosexuality in American films, but craftier directors, like Johnny Guitar’s Nicholas Ray, found ways to fill their films with enough queer subtext that audiences who were hip to the ideas would clue in as the content flew over censors&#; heads. In the case of this western, the psychosexual tension between leads Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge is so undeniable it is now widely considered an initial queer entry in the Western genre with a fairly explicitly lesbian reading.
The Boys In The Band (
Best LGBTQ+ Movies of All Time
The latest: With out latest update, we&#;ve added the most recent Certified Fresh films, including Backspot, Good One, Challengers, Bird, Love Lies Bleeding, Queer, Problemista, Fitting In, Housekeeping for Beginners, I Saw the TV Glow, In the Summers, The People’s Joker, National Anthem, Good Grief, Sebastian, FRIDA, Cuckoo, Fancy Dance, Femme, A Nice Indian Boy, and The Wedding Banquet! Watch them and more on Fandango at Home!
Our list of the Optimal LGBTQ+ Movies of All Time stretches back 90 years to the pioneering German film, Mädchen in Uniform, which was subsequently banned by the Nazis, and crosses multiple continents, cultures, and genres. There are broad American comedies (The Birdcage), artful Korean crime dramas (The Handmaiden), groundbreaking indies (Tangerine), and landmark documentaries (Paris Is Burning). Over the last few years, we added titles like the documentary Welcome to Chechnya, about LGBTQ+ activists risking their lives for the bring about in Russia; Certified Fresh comedy Shiva, Baby; and Netflix&#;s The Old Guard, a rare
The 50 Best LGBTQ Movies Ever Made
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Love, Simon ()
AmazonApple
If it feels a bit like a CW version of an after-school extraordinary , that's no mistake: Teen-tv super-producer Greg Berlanti makes his feature-film directorial debut here. It's as chaste a love story as you're likely to notice in the 21st century—the hunky gardener who makes the title teen interrogate his sexuality is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, for God’s sake—but you realize what? The queer kids of the future require their wholesome entertainment, too.
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Rocketman ()
AmazonHulu
A gay fantasia on Elton themes. An Elton John biopic was never going to be understated, but this glittering jukebox musical goes way over the top and then keeps going. It might be an overcorrection from the straight-washing of the previous year's Bohemian Rhapsody, but when it's this much fun, it's best not to overthink it.
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Handsome Devil ()
NetflixAmazon
A charming Irish movie that answers the question: "What if John Hughes were Irish and gay?" Misfit Ned struggles at a rugby-obsessed boarding school until a mysterious new kid moves in and an unlikely friendship chan
The best LGBTQ+ movies of all time
Photograph: Kate Wootton/TimeOut
With the help of primary directors, actors, writers and activists, we count down the most essential Homosexual films of all time
Like queer culture itself, homosexual cinema is not a monolith. For a extended time, though, that’s certainly how it felt. In the past, if homosexual lives and issues were ever portrayed at all on screen, it was typically from the perspective of white, cisgendered men. But as more opportunities have opened up for queer performers and filmmakers to tell their control stories, the scope of the LGBTQ+ experiences that have made their way onto the screen has gradually widened to more frequently include the transgender community and queer people of colour.
It’s still not perfect, of course. In Hollywood, as in community at large, there are many barriers left to breach and ceilings to shatter. But those recent strides deserve to be celebrated – as complete the bold films made long before the mainstream was willing to consent them. To that finish, we enlisted some Homosexual cultural pioneers, as adv as Time Out writers to assist in assembling a list of the greatest gay films ever made.