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In honor of LGBTQ Pride Month, we’re singling out 50 essential LGBTQ films - from comedies to dramas, documentaries to cult classics, underground experimental work to studio blockbusters.
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Some have been documents of a moment or era of gay history, some have been used as correctives to decades of negative clichés, and others have simply celebrated the fact that the movies can be queer, they’re here, get used to it. But since those two men first danced, there have also been scores of stories, characters, and filmmakers that have presented the varied, multitudinous aspects of LGBTQ experiences 24 frames per second that have gone past those stereotypes, or flipped them on their heads. That clip appears in The Celluloid Closet, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary based on Vito Russo’s study of homosexuality in the movies, along with countless examples of how gay characters showed up, per narrator Lily Tomlin, as “something to laugh at, or something to pity, or even something to fear.” The history of representation is long, and extremely storied, often shaping how the public viewed “the love that dare not speak its name” for better or worse. It’s considered by many to be one of the first examples of gay imagery in film, and a reminder that homosexual representation has been with the medium from the very beginning. While there’s nothing to outright suggest that these men were romantically involved or attracted to each other during the roughly 20-second length of their pas de deux, there is nothing that contradicts that notion either. It’s known as “The Dickson Experimental Sound Film,” and dates back to 1895, the same year movies were born. It was an experimental short made by William Dickson, designed to test syncing up moving pictures to prerecorded sound, a system that he and Thomas Edison were developing known as the Kinetophone. But this brief footage is not so ancient that you can’t clearly make out two men, waltzing together, as a third man plays a violin in the background. The lovers are threatened when an anonymous poison-pen note is sent to one of the heads of the base if they are found out, they will each get five years in prison at hard labor.It’s grainy, faded, and, given the clip is now 125 years old, more than a little worse for wear. We are made aware that these characters are living under the most oppressive conditions when Sergey is making a joke about Stalin and is interrupted by a superior who takes note of his behavior. Though set mainly in the 1970s, “Firebird” often feels like it is taking place in the 1940s and ‘50s, but that is likely true to the era and locale being recreated. When the clandestine lovers sneak off to skinny-dip with each other and start to have sex underwater, Rebane quickly cuts to two very phallic jet planes shooting ultra-fast together through the sky. When Sergey and Roman finally kiss, it feels like a collision, like cymbals clashing, but there is a lighthearted quality to the way Rebane portrays their passion that can sometimes feel more than a little silly. Merriam-Webster Targeted Online With Threats of Anti-LGBTQ Violence, U.S. You could follow the first half of “Firebird” even if you didn’t speak English, because all of the meanings are being expressed visually rather than in dialogue. When Sergey is driving a truck with Roman in the passenger seat, we see trees going by on the windshield but only on Roman’s side of the screen, an expressive visual idea that is all the more effective for not being lingered on. There is a scene in which Sergey and Roman are in a darkroom developing photographs together, where Mäekivi casts an orange glow over their faces broken only by the red of their lips, a very unusual color combination that greatly aids the feeling of a building romantic tension between them. The dominant creative force in this first section of “Firebird” is cinematographer Mait Mäekivi, who gives the blues and reds of the uniforms and the flags on display an early-Technicolor sort of gleam.
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Rebane keeps things going at a lightly simmering pace as we watch Sergey falling more and more in love with Roman the actors speak English with light Russian accents, but words have very little importance here. Billy Eichner Makes History at CinemaCon With First Look at LGBTQ+ Rom-Com ‘Bros’