10 Formative Queer-Themed Movies

Director Basil Dearden's 1961 courtroom drama is widely credited for helping shift attitudes toward homosexuality in 1960s Great Britain, aided by matinee idol Dirk Bogarde taking a career turn in the starring role as a married lawyer who comes to terms with his sexual orientation as he pursues a blackmailer targeting gay men. Though he was in a longtime relationship with his manager Anthony Forwood, Bogarde never came out as gay, but his connection to the material was apparent, and 'Victim' informed his career choices as he entered the golden age of his storied life on screen (see: 'The Servant' and 'Death in Venice').

One of the many things I love about this movie is how Kaitlyn Dever’s character’s queerness and identity is a seamless part of the story. For her best friend, Molly, and her entire graduating class, it's just part of who she is. And her bathroom encounter with Hope is as edgy as anything else that goes down the night before graduation, like Miss Fine’s hook up with Theo.

Two inmates sharing cigarette smoke through a straw from their adjoining cells is a lasting image from Jean Genet's short 'Un chant d'amour,' the one film the writer made influenced by his numerous stints in prison. I hunted down a dubbed VHS copy in the early '90s after seeing Todd Haynes' 'Poison,' an experimental anthology film based on Genet's work. Its political and social relevance also serves as a reminder of when filmmakers, producers, and distributors took risks to get films in front of an audience. If you're at all intrigued, dig into what went into getting the short made and into any sort of screening room initially.

Stranger danger at the beach. Icky sexy. Alain Guiraudie's movie is a conversation starter. If you're at a bar, party, etc., and someone you don't know hears you reference the film, you wind up talking with them for the rest of the night. At the very least.

You might not look at General Zod quite the same way after watching Terence Stamp in Pier Paolo Pasolini's drama about a godlike (and highly sexual) being who dismantles a bourgeois family's dynamic. Pasolini was condemned by the Vatican and brought up on obscenity charges in an Italian court soon after the movie's premiere at the 1968 Venice Film Festival.

Throughout her career, director Shirley Clarke captured moments with fringe characters who gave New York City the grit and texture that has been scrubbed away over time. 'Portrait of Jason,' which Clarke filmed over a 12-hour period in Jason Holliday's room at the fabled Chelsea Hotel, is a confrontational and sobering documentary that continues to find new audiences. With a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other, Holliday embroiders a life story that was going on downtown while Truman Capote was cozied up to his Swans.

Derek Jarman made videos for The Smiths, he knew how to adapt Shakespeare better than most, he was an early HIV/AIDS activist, and he was one of the most eloquent spokespeople for those living with HIV. When it comes to his career in film, you could focus on the sets he designed for Ken Russell's 'The Devils' or how his 'Caravaggio' serves as Tilda Swinton’s first role, but it’s 'Blue,' his final movie, that I think about most. Jarman used a single, constant delphinium blue image to represent how he currently saw the world: As he was losing his sight at the end of his life, everything became blue-tinted. Released mere months before he passed, 'Blue' is, to me, his most resonant permanent exhibit.

If you're more familiar with Antonio Banderas as a '90s icon, consider traveling a bit further back in time to the first movies he made with Pedro Almodóvar, including my top recommendation (and the movie Almodóvar has said is Banderas's best performance). Queer love triangles, trans representation, unhinged emotions, addiction – it’s all there in the movie that serves as the legendary Rossy de Palma's debut, too.

People tend to remember 'Pink Flamingos' as the most shocking John Waters movie, but I feel 'Female Trouble' managed to out-gross its predecessor, and it has better story. I completely forgot that Waters made the movie with help from film professors at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and their students, even. I'm thinking about the kids who got their first experiences on this production. RIP Divine, Cookie, Edith, and David.

There are no men to be seen in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s movie that typically ranks right behind ‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’ on top 10 lists of Fassbinder’s finest. Margit Carstensen, who was vocal about Fassbinder’s brutal treatment of his actors and made five films with him, literally controls every aspect of her life in the title role, until a young model threatens to manage her composed existence. This is a psychosexual drama; don’t be pulled in thinking you’ll see sexualized depictions of this sadomasochistic relationship.