New York Film Society To Screen Queer Cinema Before Stonewall Season

Nowadays there certainly aren’t a lack of gay-themed films being made (even though many aren’t seen as widely as they deserve), with plenty of movies and short films, as well as LGBT film festivals and niche distributors supporting them. However, it’s not always been that way, as in the past it was incredibly difficult to tell gay-themed stories, unless you did it heavily in code.

However, there are a handful of LGBT movies from before Stonewall, many of which are vital cultural treasures, giving us an incredibly rare insight into the life of gay people, artists and thought at a time when it was incredibly difficult to tell such tales, both from a commercial and legal standpoints. It’s great then that the New York’s Film Society is planning a season of pre-Stonewall LGBT films, that will screen from April 22nd through May 1st.

Queer Cinema Before Stonewall includes cult classics such as Jean Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour, Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks and Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet, which together make up the opening night screening. Other films to feature include Joseph Mawra’s Chained Girls, Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, Andy Warhol’s My Hustler, Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda?, Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George, and Hitchcock’s Rope.

It’s a fascinating mix of films by gay artists that range from the coy to the sexually provocative, as well as the different ways straight filmmakers treated LGBT themes at a time when people thought about sexuality in a very different way to today – it ranges from the coded gay killers of Rope, to society as a prison for gay people in Un Chant d’Amour. If you’re in New York, there are an awful lot of worthwhile films to check out. You can find out more info at the Lincoln Center website.

Take a look below for the season’s trailer.