Celebrate Pride Month this year with Kanopy’s wide selection of LGBTQ+ films, filmmakers, and documentaries, available for free through your library. Whether you’re an aspiring filmmaker looking for inspiration for your next project, or an avid cinemagoer, we’ve picked out a handful of favorites and listed them below, but there is much more to discover. Sign in and check out Kanopy’s tailored collection of films for Pride Month here.
Feature Films
Portrait of a Lady on Fire – dir. Céline Sciamma
Céline Sciamma’s romantic period drama impressed audiences and critics alike at the 2019 Cannes film festival, earning the award for Best Screenplay. As the women orbit each other, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse’s first moments of freedom.
The Watermelon Woman – dir. Cheryl Dunye
This debut feature film by independent film trailblazer Cheryl Dunye offers a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye blends fiction with reality as her story investigates a performer known as the Watermelon Woman, and American cinema’s history of black gay identity.
Titane – dir. Julia Ducournau
Winner of the 2021 Palme d’Or, TITANE is a visual ride filled with genre breaking moments and plot twists. Family, horror, identity and love are all at the heart of this wild film that defies the conventional labels of most films.
Funeral Parade of Roses: Bara no sôretsu – dir. Toshio Matsumoto
A subversive and intoxicating film of the late 1960s, this by Toshio Matsumoto feature is considered by many to be a masterpiece. The unseen Tokyo night-world of drag queen bars and fabulous divas, filled with booze, drugs, fuzz guitars, performance art and black mascara, sets the stage for a violent love-triangle with serious consequences.
Tangerine – dir. Sean Baker
Recent winner of the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards for ‘Anora’, Sean Baker established himself in the American independent scene with this neo-realist look into the LA subcultures Hollywood often ignores and shies away from.
Documentaries
The Queen: Behind the Scenes of a 1967 Drag Beauty Pageant – dir. Frank Simon
This ground-breaking documentary about the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant introduced audiences to the world of competitive drag. Go backstage with the contestants as they rehearse and transform into their drag personas in this vibrant piece of queer history thanks to a new restoration from the original camera negative.
Stonewall Uprising – dir. Kate Davis, David Heilbroner
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Violent protests and demonstrations erupted in the streets for the next six days, and the Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement.
Little Girl – dir. Sébastien Lifshitz
LITTLE GIRL is the moving portrait of 7-year-old Sasha, who has always known that she is a girl. Realized with delicacy and intimacy, Sébastien Lifshitz’s documentary poetically explores the emotional challenges, everyday feats, and small moments in Sasha’s life as she and her family navigate and confront outdated norms in their search for affirmation within a small community of rural France.
Short Films
Short Films of Cheryl Dunye – dir. Cheryl Dunye
These inventive, self-reflexive films from the early career of Cheryl Dunye offer a unique look into the style and themes that she would continue to explore over the course of her career. This style, dubbed “Dunyementary,” looks at the intersections of black and queer identity in funny, sometimes derisively humorous shorts.
The Talent – dir. Thomas May Bailey
Thomas May Bailey turns the lens back on the film production process itself in this fictional expansion of some of his own experiences in the industry. “House of the Dragon’s” Emma D’Arcy navigates their own personal and professional ambitions amidst the toxicity of the commercial film industry.
Algie the Miner – dir. Alice Guy
The first woman director in the history of cinema, Alice Guy directed this delightful silent film short in 1912. Follow Algie as he struggles against his own nature as he tries to prove himself masculine enough to wed the girl of his dreams. While not explicitly gay, Algie the Miner is applauded for it’s early depiction of queerness without falling into the vilifying trap of caricature.
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