In Search of Avery Willard iIlluminates the life and work of the groundbreaking, and mostly forgotten, artist Avery Willard — photographer, filmmaker, writer, publisher, leatherman, pornographer.
Related Movies
Outside Center (2023)
Finding community via his gay rugby league, Jamaican-born Desmond navigates life, love, and identity as an immigrant living in Munich, Germany.
Undressing Israel: Gay Men in the Promised Land (2013)
When many people think of Israel, it is often in terms of modern war or ancient religion. But there is much more to the Jewish state then missiles and prayers. In his debut as a documentary filmmaker, adult-film entrepreneur and political columnist Michael Lucas examines a side of Israel that is too often overlooked: its thriving gay community. Undressing Israel features interviews with a diverse range of local men, including a gay member of Israel's parliament, a trainer who served openly in the army, a young Arab-Israeli journalist, and a pair of dads raising their kids. Lucas also visits Tel Aviv's vibrant nightlife scene-and a same-sex wedding-in this guided tour to a country that emerged as a pioneer for gay integration and equality.
Witches, Faggots, Dykes and Poofters (1980)
In 1978 the police attacked demonstrators at the Sydney (Australia) Mardi Gras celebrations. This film details the communities' responses.
Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption (2013)
Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi is a play retelling the Jesus story, with Jesus as a gay man living in the 1950s in Corpus Christi, Texas. This documentary follows the troupe, playwright, and audience around the world on a five-year journey of Terrence McNally’s passion play, where voices of protest and support collide on one of the central issues facing the LGBT community: religion.
Homotherapy: A Religious Sickness (2019)
In 2019, some still consider homosexuality as a disease that needs to be cured. Focusing on movements with roots in the United States, which draw on both religion and psychiatry to justify so-called conversion therapies, an investigation into the devastating consequences of certain practices that seem to successfully avoid any control by European public authorities.
Boys for Sale (2017)
Through animation and a series of interviews with nine young men in Tokyo's gay district, this documentary exposes and humanizes the rarely seen world of gay sex work in Japan.
I'm Not Gay (2023)
A conflicted gay man struggles to teach his younger self about the challenges of adult life. Searching for answers inside stories from his past, he must confront his nature and the man he will become. Documentary meets musical feature in this experimental coming of age drama about power and masculinity in modern day Australia.
Sex Positive (2009)
Sex Positive explores the life of Richard Berkowitz, a revolutionary gay S&M hustler turned AIDS activist in the 1980s, whose incomparable contribution to the invention of safe sex has never been aptly credited. Mr. Berkowitz emerged from the epicenter of the epidemic demanding a solution to the problem before the outside world would take heed. Now destitute and alone, Mr. Berkowitz tells his story to a world who never wanted to listen.
Le charme de l'ambiguïté (1974)
From transvestites to transformers, we will follow the trail that will lead us in different and famous Parisian music-halls, such as the mythical Alcazar of Paris, La Grande Eugène. Whether they are below or beyond their character, often these men who are looking for themselves look at life with the humor of despair. Why this need to "transform" themselves? Why is it always the men who cross-dress and not the women? Why did the public flock to these shows in the 1970s and 1980s? Interpretations of famous characters such as Diana Ross, Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, the Peter Sisters, the Andrew Sisters, Zizi Jeanmaire, Judy Garland, Sarah Bernhardt, among others, contribute to making this musical document an essential testimony of this era.
Casa Susanna (2022)
In the 50s and 60s, deep in the American countryside at the foot of the Catskills, a small wooden house with a barn behind it was home to the first clandestine network of cross-dressers. Diane and Kate are now 80 years old. At the time, they were men and part of this secret organization. Today, they relate this forgotten but essential chapter of the early days of trans-identity. It is a story full of noise and fury, rich in extraordinary characters, including the famous Susanna, who had the courage to create this refuge that came to be known as Casa Susanna.
Fish Can't Fly (2005)
From a secular point of view, the film explores the lives of gay men and women of faith as they recall their journeys to put their sexuality and spirituality in harmony. Finding that their strong religious convictions and faith seemed to be used against them, these are the personal stories of people who have participated in "ex-gay" ministries and found in fact that they did not provide a so-called cure. The answers seemed to come from within. With less of a focus on the "ex-gay" movement, the film is more about the telling of stories behind the debate and the role religion can play in one's life.
Growing Up Trans (2015)
Just a generation ago, it was adults, not kids, who changed genders. But today, many children are transitioning, too—with new medical options, and at younger and younger ages. Told from the perspective of parents, doctors, and, most revealing of all, the kids themselves, the documentary takes a powerful look at this new generation, exploring the medical possibilities, struggles and choices transgender kids and their families face today.
Demétrios (2022)
Performative and expository documentary, which highlights the contrast of experience among transgender men in Brazil. The short film brings five characters - Kenai, Caetano, Augusto, Pietro and Daniel -, each one reflecting a different reality.
Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo' Halfway House (2008)
See for yourself what happens behind the doors of America's zaniest ex-gay residential program. Peterson Toscano presents his one-man comedy. Through seven characters Toscano takes you on a comic tour of the Homo No Mo Halfway House, a Christian residential 12-Step program that attempts to save men and women from the "evil snares of homosexuality" through bizarre rules, gender realignment, and brain numbing reconditioning. From the daily rap sessions on appropriate male dress to the surreal Family and Friends Weekend, prepare yourself for a rocky and raucous tour of the house, and see for yourself if our hero comes OUT alive! Based on Toscano's real life experience floundering in various Ex-gay ministries, he weaves together humor, program jargon and outrageous eye witness accounts to form a piece that is hilarious, poignant and inspirational. Having premiered the play in Memphis in 2003, Toscano traveled for five years in North America and Europe presenting it hundreds of times.
Kiss 25 Goodbye (1991)
Outrage kiss-in at Bow Street police station in London, with a demonstration against homophobic government bills clause 25/28.
Crimes Against Nature (1979)
Described in the 70’s as "A Chorus Line for gay people," Crimes Against Nature remains vital today as a communal disclosure of roles that gay people adopt in order to survive in a world that devalues homosexual feelings. It features individual actors delivering revealing monologues, during which the other members of the collective play background roles (parents, schoolmates, etc.). One by one, the actors detail the ways in which they have buried their true selves in order to survive and be accepted in the world: repression, drug use, shyness, being agreeable, putting experiences into "little boxes," acting "butch," and so on.
Butch Jamie (2008)
The film follows the story of Jamie, a struggling butch lesbian actress who gets cast as a man in a film. The main plot is a romantic comedy between Jamie's male alter-ego, "Male Jamie," and Jill, a heterosexual woman on set. The film's subplots include Jamie's bisexual roommate Lola and her cat actor Howard, Lola's abrasive butch German girlfriend Andi, and Jamie's gay Asian friend David.
Our Marriages (2013)
Documentary about four Chinese lesbian women who seek contract marriages with gay men, and form of their lesbian and gay community and fulfill their desires.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)
Describing herself as a 'street queen,' Johnson was a legendary fixture in New York City’s gay ghetto and a tireless voice for LGBT pride since the days of Stonewall, who along with fellow trans icon Sylvia Rivera, founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), a trans activist group based in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village. Her death in 1992 was declared a suicide by the NYPD, but friends never accepted that version of events. Structured as a whodunit, with activist Victoria Cruz cast as detective and audience surrogate, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson celebrates the lasting political legacy of Johnson, while seeking to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death.