Melvin Udall, a cranky, bigoted, obsessive-compulsive writer of romantic fiction, is rude to everyone he meets, including his gay neighbor, Simon. After Simon is hospitalized, Melvin finds his life turned upside down when he has to look after Simon's dog. In addition, Carol, the only waitress at the local diner who will tolerate him, must leave work to care for her sick son, making it impossible for Melvin to eat breakfast.
Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.
About the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dalí, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico García Lorca.
Touko Laaksonen, a decorated officer, returns home after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II, but life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds peace-time Helsinki rampant with persecution of the homosexual and men around him even being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art, specialising in homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. His work – made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’ – became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of a gay revolution.
In the 1960s, British painter Francis Bacon surprises a burglar and invites him to share his bed. The burglar, a working class man named George Dyer, accepts. After the unique beginning to their love affair, the well-connected and volatile artist assimilates Dyer into his circle of eccentric friends, as Dyer's struggle with addiction strains their bond.
A look at the life of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe from his rise to fame in the 1970s to his untimely death in 1989.
England, 1890s. The brutal and embittered Marquis of Queensberry, who believes that his youngest son, Bosie, has an inappropriate relationship with the famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde, maintains an ongoing feud with the latter in order to ruin his reputation and cause his fall from grace.
Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.
Traces the Beats from Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac's meeting in 1944 at Columbia University to the deaths of Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs in 1997. Three actors provide dramatic interpretations of the work of these three writers, and the film chronicles their friendships, their arrival into American consciousness, their travels, frequent parodies, Kerouac's death, and Ginsberg's politicization. Their movement connects with bebop, John Cage's music, abstract expressionism, and living theater. In recent interviews, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kesey, Ferlinghetti, Mailer, Jerry Garcia, Tom Hayden, Gary Snyder, Ed Sanders, and others measure the Beats' meaning and impact.
The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a painting he hopes to sell, encountering friends, whose lives (and performances) we peek into.
The gifted, charismatic artist John Cranko moves to the Swabian province from London, where he is attacked for his homosexuality, and after many crises becomes the great sensation as the new pop star of the arts: the Stuttgart Ballet Miracle.
Built upon a 14 hour interview, McKellen: Playing the Part is a unique journey through the key landmarks of McKellen's life, from early childhood into a demanding career that placed him in the public eye for the best part of his lifetime. Using an abundance of photography from McKellen's private albums and cinematically reconstructed scenes, a raw talent shines through in the intensity, variety and devotion to that moment in the light.
A film portrait of the influential Bavarian actor, director and screenwriter who publicly confessed
his homosexuality.
Film biography dwelling on the hectic artistic life of António Variações, a famous Portuguese pop rock singer from the 80s, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1984.
DANNY SAYS is a documentary unveiling the amazing journey of Danny Fields. Fields has played a pivotal role in music and culture with seminal acts including: the Doors, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, MC5, Nico, the Ramones and beyond.
An intimate look at pioneering artist George Platt Lynes, who took radically explicit photographs of the male nude. The documentary reveals Lynes’ gifted eye for the male form, his long-term friendships with Gertrude Stein and Alfred Kinsey, and his lasting influence as one of the first openly gay American artists.
Through letters, diaries and personal testimonies, an account of the complexity and variety of experiences of LGBT Italians during the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini (1922-43); intimate words that contrast with the lyrics of popular songs and the propaganda of the time, obsessed with extolling the myths of virility, femininity and motherhood and constrained by sexual repression.
The parallel lives of writer Truman Capote (1924-84) and playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-83): two friends, two geniuses who, while creating sublime works, were haunted by the ghosts of the past, the shadow of constant doubt, the demon of addictions and the blinding, deceptive glare of success.
After a difficult break-up, Hockney is left unable to paint, much to the concern of his friends.
A documentary about Academy Award-winning costume designer Cecil Beaton. A respected photographer, artist, and set designer, Beaton was best known for designing on award-winning films such as 'Gigi' (1958) and 'My Fair Lady' (1964). The film features archive footage and interviews with a number of models, artists, and filmmakers who worked closely with Beaton during his illustrious career.