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The Other Database...

We do strive to include every film that has been screened at the LGBT film festivals around the world.

Life does become a little more difficult when they [the films] don’t have an IMDb entry...therefore, they end up here...films in dire need of publicity/promotion/marketing...

1980s - UPDATED: October 2023

 

 

 

 

 

... ist mein ganzes Herz

Verena Moser

1985

Switzerland / 12 mins

17 Rooms (Or What Do Lesbians Do in Bed?)

Caroline Sheldon

1985

UK / 10 mins
What do lesbians do in bed? with a star-studded soundtrack, we’re shown women doing everything in bed from knitting and drinking tea to having raucous pillow-fights.

1984 – The Year of The Rat Woman

Del LaGrace

1984

UK / 10 mins
Filmed the morning after the night before a gaggle of dykes descend on Portobello Road in London to perform for Della Disgrace’s dystopian Super-8 sci fi fantasy about “the end of the world, when only the females of two species survive, rats and womyn”.

An Invitation to Marilyn C

Jacqui Duckworth

1983

UK / 12mins
This short drama is a humorous exploration of a woman regaining power as she challenges male supremacy in culture, the porn industry and film.

Ana Mendieta: Fuego de Tierra

Kate Horsfield,
Nereyda Garcia-Ferraz

1987

USA / 49 mins
Performance artist and sculptor Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) used the raw materials of nature: water, mud, fire, rock, and grass. Drawing upon the raw spiritual power of Afro-Cuban religion, Mendieta used her art as a ritualistic and symbolic activity to celebrate the forces of life and the continuum of change. A silhouette of her own body inserted in the land emphasizes the relations between the two bodies: female and Earth.
Trailer… https://vimeo.com/162467734

Are We Free?! /
Somos Libres!?

Miguel Ángel Cárdenas

1981

The Netherlands / 22 mins
To what extent are gay men 'free'? There are many countries in the world where they are oppressed and discriminated against both legally and illegally. Somos Libres!? (which is Spanish for: 'Are we free!?') tells the story of two young homosexuals who flee the repression of their native country to seek their freedom elsewhere. The main characters appear in various scenes that sound out their new-found freedom and which are enacted in a humourous mixture of performance, theatre, music and video techniques. Barcelona proves to be a big disappointment despite the fact that this harbour city has a traditional tolerance of homosexuals (it's no coincidence that it's the location of Jean Genet's 'The Thief's Journal'). Their freedom is far from being realized, as it till is in much of the world of 1995.

Blue Movie

Stephen Cummins

1984

Australia / 4 mins
The somnambulist caressed by shadows disappears into light. Doppelgänger in blue.

Breathbeat

Stephen Cummins

1984

Australia / 6 mins
A rhythmic study of the geography of the body. Flesh reduced to diagonals in frame. Tension, intent and the beat of the body.

Bungalow Depression

Grayson Perry, Jennifer Binnie

1981

UK / 4 mins

Danny

Stashu Kybartas

1987

USA / 20 mins
A moving and personal documentary about Danny, a friend of Kybartas who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986. This powerful work explores the reason for Danny’s return home and his attempts to reconcile his relationship with his family, who had difficulty facing his homosexuality and his imminent death.

Deadpan

Stephen Cummins

1985

Australia / 5 mins
A pan through the labyrinth of time and space, ever decreasing circles of focus, words, conversation. Who is this man, what does he want?

Die Braut erstarrt

Hella Böhm

1985

Germany / 12 mins

Dyke After Dyke /
Francha con Francha

Maria Angelica Lemos

1989

Brazil, Canada / 3 mins
Two women sing a passionate duet about love, girls and the inevitable.

East End Underground Movement

Bev Zalcock,
Sara Chambers

1985/95

UK / 4:30 mins

Els Ocellots Agafen L’últim Tramvia

Els 5 QK’s

1982

Spain
Una de les obres cims de Els 5 QK s. Dues heroïnes terribles, Alexandra del Llac (Dolç ocell de joventut) i Blanca del Bosc (Un tramvia anomenat desig), brillantment interpretades per Luis i Ces, coincideixen gràcies a un accident de cotxes i s'uneixen per portar a terme un joc macabre en el qual semblen voler acabar amb tot el que aquests cineastes odiaven: les regles estilístiques, les normes socials i els convencionalismes sexuals.

Evi erzählt Klartext zum ersten Mal

Muriel Utinger, Tina Z’Rotz

1989

Germany / 3 mins

Frankly, Shirley

Margaret Moores

1987

Canada / 22 mins
A one-night stand that continues. The affair is wistfully recounted by one of the lovers. She recalls the last time they made love and chronicles their amorous adventures. They never made love in bed and the narrator surmises that their relationship ended because of a dearth of conversation and a lack of locations. Where some lesbians hesitate to hold hands, this work places sexuality in the public domain. Against a backdrop of tourist attractions, their passion rules.

Fun With A Sausage
Fun With A Sausage

Ingrid Wilhite

1985

15 mins
A playful butch tests the waters by cruising Castro Street with a sausage stuffed down her Levi’s, but finds redemption among San Francisco’s sometimes-fractuous lesbian community.

Gay Black Group

No info

1983

25 mins
Magazine programme

Gay Liberation Week, Gothenburg

No info

1984

Sweden / 8:30 mins
Community radio was important for dissemination of LGBTQ news during the 1980’s and 1990’s, and Gay Radio broadcasts were set up in Borås, Gothenburg, Halland, Malmö, Norrköping, Umeå, Örebro – and Stockholm. In the following clip Stockholm Gay Radio mentions a report from a public inquiry on the situation for homosexuals in Swedish society. The report argued for, among other things, anti-discrimination laws, strengthened asylum rights and domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. Many politicians, however, weren’t convinced.

Gay Liberation Week, Stockholm

No info

1981

Sweden / 1:45 mins
During the summer of 1981, while preparations for the Gay Liberation Week in Stockholm were underway, the first cases of HIV/AIDS were reported in USA. In Stockholm, one of the themes for the Gay Liberation Week was international solidarity. The first case of HIV in Sweden would be diagnosed in the fall of 1982, and the fight against the virus and new stigmatizations would set its mark on the LGBTQ movement for decades.

Gayblevision:
A Celebration of 2 Years on Air

No info

1982

Canada
This tape is a celebration of two years of regular programming by Canada s only Gay produced television show - Gayblevision. It covers the entire spectrum of the gay experience: everything from the Mr. Leather Contest to an interview with lesbian novelist Jane Rule.
Watch...https://vimeo.com/117339217

Gravity

Wrik Mead

1987

Canada / 3 mins
When you wake up and you have so much to do that you just want to go back to bed. The illusion of a reverse shooting schedule emphasizes the entire cycle of life.
Watch...http://www.wrikmead.com/films/gravity.html

If I Had a Dollar to Spend

Marion Scemama

1989

USA / 3 mins
David Wojnarowicz’s performance at King Tut’s Wha Wha Hut, East Village, NY May 1989.

Keep Your Laws Off My Body

Catherine Gund

1989

USA / 13 mins
Intimate scenes of gentle sexuality and domesticity set to the mechanical cadence of a projector (evoking a feeling somewhere between the repetitive labour of a sewing machine and violence of a machine gun) are juxtaposed with images of police and sirens to highlight the alarming intrusion of America’s laws on queer people and women’s bodies in healthcare, sexual expression, and desire.

L’Usure

Jeanne Crépeau

1986

Canada / 8 mins
Who said breaking up was beautiful? A quickie melodrama by one of Québec’s leading lesbian directors.

Lesbians

Pam Walton

1986

USA / 5 mins
Filmed as a Stanford class project, three politically incorrect lesbians discuss the competing definitions of the “L-word.”

Liberty’s Booty

Vivienne Dick

1980

USA / 48 mins
An investigation into prostitution from a female perspective under a late capitalist economy. Also, a document and a celebration of a New York subculture in the late seventies. With a dense mix of real testimonies, verité footage and acted out scenarios, this film examines power relations and the commodification of the body.

Locale

Charles Atlas

1980

USA / 29 mins
Locale was designed to explore the possibilities of moving cameras and moving dancers in a film. Filmed at the Merce Cunningham Studio, Westbeth, New York NY, Jan - Feb 1979. First public screening at City Center Theater, New York NY, 24 February 1980. The camera movements are choreographed as precisely as those of the dancers. Three kinds of cameras were used: Steadicam, Movieola crab dolly and an Elemac dolly with a crane arm. "Locale" was structured in four parts based on use of specific cameras, dancers, and time. Filmmaker Charles Atlas also designed the costumes, choosing the same hues as are seen on the television adjustment color-bars and comining these with the gradations of the corresponding gray-based tones used in tuning black and white television monitors.

Mirror, Mirror

Paula Levine

1987

USA / 3 mins

Crime Tales

Robert Burden, Dictelio Cepeda

1982

Accompanied by the tag line "hard facts and hard humor about a hard way of life," this newly resurfaced public access tv short documentary from 1982 interviews Manhattan's diverse male street hustler population about their stories and struggles.
Watch...https://youtu.be/dQrPGSDvWdU

Rediscovering the Magic of Norm Bruns:

THEATRE OF THE HORSE AND MOON (c.1980-81, 13 Mins, silent)

SWIM (c.1980-81, 7 Mins)

BED DESERT (c.1980-81, 5 Mins, silent)

FIGURE WITH 14 TRAINS (c.1980-81, 7 Mins)

BINGO (c.1980-81, 6 Mins, silent)

BLUE AURA (c.1980-81, 4 Mins)

DUCK (c.1980-81, 3 Mins, silent)

THE POET AND THE POND (c.1980-81, 6 Mins)

SCREEN TEST (c.1980-81, 3 Mins, silent)

THE UNUSUAL BOOK (c.1980-81, 10 Mins)

Norm Bruns  1980 -
1981 

USA / 64 mins
Reflecting on Reeling’s roots in the 1980s on the occasion of our 40th anniversary, we proudly reintroduce to Chicago audiences the recently rediscovered films of Chicago queer experimental filmmaker Norm Bruns. Brun’s work was first shown publicly at Chicago Filmmakers at an open screening in 1980, he was given a one-person show in 1981, and then a retrospective at the Chicago Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (later named Reeling) in 1989, the year before his death of AIDS. Working with a home movie camera he bought at a garage sale and with no film training nor familiarity with the artists to whom film critics would later compare him, Bruns created a unique and personal body of work in less than a year––work that is astonishing, bold, and other-worldly. With a decidedly queer sensibility infused with subtle homoeroticism, his films have been compared to those of Jean Cocteau and George Méliès for their dreamlike fantastical qualities. Largely shot in grainy black-and-white, the films are whimsical, featuring elaborate hand-made set pieces and costumes. After remaining unseen for more than 30 years since his death, Bruns’ films have been recently located, and the magic of his vision can once again light up the screen. The program will feature ten of Bruns’ films from 1980-1981. Special thanks to Josh Mabe for tracking down Norm’s family and Norm’s family for the safekeeping of his films.

 

Solitude

John Maybury

1981

UK / 13 min

Some Aspect of a Shared Lifestyle

Gregg Bordowitz

1986

USA / 22 mins
Reframing the debate from one of moral calumny to a matter of the Constitutional right to privacy, Bordowitz successfully portrays the complexity of issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic, forcefully arguing for the need to confront AIDS as an equal-opportunity threat to all members of society.

Taste the Difference

Stephen Cummins

1989

Australia / 1 mins
Referencing the then-current debate over the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Western Australia, the commercial aimed to “sell” gay sexuality, but was banned by the TV station manager. One of ten TV commercials commissioned for the “Personal Ads” group art project in Perth.

The Attitude Assumed:
Still Life With Still Born

Cerith Wyn Evans

1980

UK / 19 mins

The Gospel At Colonus
The Gospel at Colonus

Lee Breuer,
Bob Telson

1985

USA / 90 mins
The Gospel at Colonus is a gospel version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. The show was created in New York City in 1985 by the experimental-theatre director Lee Breuer, one of the founders of the seminal American avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, and composer Bob Telson. The original script was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show had a brief run on Broadway from March to May in 1988. Breuer was Tony-nominated for his book.  Breuer and Telson handed the storytelling duties to a black Pentecostal preacher and the choir of his church, who in turn enacted the story of Oedipus's torment and redemption as a modern parable. They employed the unusual device of casting The Blind Boys of Alabama to collectively portray Oedipus as well the Chancel Choir of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.  While the traditions of Greek theater as religious ritual are unfamiliar to modern audiences, Gospel at Colonus reaffirms those possibilities by its use of call-and-response and ecstatic, sung re-enactment of a culturally important story. PBS televised the original BAM production from Philadelphia in 1985 as part of the Great Performances series, with Morgan Freeman as The Messenger, Carl Lumbly as Theseus, and Robert Earl Jones as Creon.
Watch... https://youtu.be/8ZyQP_zrD2U

The Miracle of the Rose

Cerith Wyn Evans

1984

UK / 25 mins

The Private View

Neo Naturists

1984

UK / 13 mins

The Technology of Souls

John Maybury

1981

UK / 11 mins

Thresholds /
Umbrales

Marie Louise Alemann

1980

Argentina / 19 mins
A threshold can be a site of initiation or a moment of passage into a different condition or experience. Shot in Paris and in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s last dictatorship, this film provides a rare point of access into queer experience under a repressive regime.

Untitled

Michael Brynntrup

1987

Germany / 7 mins 
Photo, film, and TV images from September 22nd, 1981. Corner of Potsdamer Strasse and Bülowstrasse.
Watch...https://vimeo.com/218718680

Vermisst 1987
Vermisst:
I. Merx, Privatdetektivin

Dagmar Heinrich

1987

Switzerland / 35 mins

Videonachrichten

Maria Lang

1989

Germany / 30 mins

Who is Richard Jay Silverthorn, Anyway?

No info

1980

USA / 8 mins
Fulfilling the dreams of many artists, the USC student filmmaker turns the camera inward, giving us access to his vibrant and twisted inner world.

Women Like Us & Women Like That

Rosalind Pearson

1989 &
1991

UK / 55 mins & 30 mins
First screened in 1989 as part of Channel 4’s groundbreaking TV series ‘Out on Tuesday’, these two documentaries explore and revisit the lives of older lesbians in the UK from different cultures, classes and backgrounds from the 1920s to that present day (1989). Their stories incorporate ideas about lesbianism, the changing image of lesbians, love and romance, the pressures that led some of them to marry and the later discovery of their lesbian identity with the subsequent coming out stories to their children.

Putting this in context, only 6 years earlier Channel 4 had launched ‘One in Five’, a weekly programme for the gay and lesbian communities which led to call for Channel 4 to be scrapped!

Tenderness /
Zärtlichkeiten

Maria Lang

1985

Germany / 28 mins
Women love other women in Berlin.

Zwei Frauen

Maria Lang

1984

Germany / 3 mins

 

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