Bright Lights Film Journal | Gay and Lesbian Cinema

actor profiles

animation

book reviews

director profiles

documentaries

experimental &
avant garde

exploitation

film festivals

film noir

film reviews

gay & lesbian

hong kong films

horror

interviews

japanese cinema

music & musicals

silent film

tranny cinema

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Gay & Lesbian

in issue 57

Glancing, Staring, Cruising: Queer Ways of Looking — Ecce homo

Close to Home: The Films of Su Friedrich on DVD — Autobiography sometimes trumps art in these uneven works

Closing the Closet: QDoc: The 2007 Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival — "We couldn't figure out how to divide the cat . . ."

in issue 55

Janet Gaynor — If she was forced, like so many actors, to live a closeted life, she at least did it as much on her own terms as she could in those tricky times.

in issue 53

Genet Meets Fassbinder: Sexual Disorientation(s) in Querelle — "Why is Fassbinder allowed this aesthetic duplicity in the melodramas but not in Querelle?"

in issue 52

Camping out with James Bidgood: The Auteur of Pink Narcissus Tells All — "I don't live in a harem either, but well, God, I did for awhile . . ."

Speaking Out: Pioneering Doc Word Is Out Turns 29 — Assimilate this

in issue 51

Inside the Dreamboat Factory: The Fairy Godfather of Hollywood — "He won't be gay when I get through with him!"

Men in Love: On Brokeback Mountain — Ang Lee expertly limns the catastrophes of the closet

Toto, I Don't Think We're in the Grand Tetons Anymore: Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain — Queens in Jeans?

More Fun in the New (Queer) World: The 2005 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival — Out of the closets and onto the screens

in issue 49

The Kid Behind the Camera: Chatting up Darren Stein — Put the Camera on Me's queer wunderkind speaks

The Rage from Nowhere? Arthur Dong's Licensed to Kill Interviews Murderers of Gays — "I'm bad, but I'm locked up."

Private Rituals Made Public: The Lost Erotica of Fred Halsted — "The whole world wears a jockstrap!"

Bobby Abate — Naked rough trade, sleepy rimmers, a man licking a modem — these are some of the denizens of Abate's sensual, skewed world

in issue 48

Tears for Queers: Different from the Others, Michael, and Sex in Chains on DVD — Kino's unusual series spotlights German silent gay-themed cinema

in issue 46

Defending the Deviates: Evelyn Hooker Documentary Changing Our Minds on Video — "It had something to do with my sexual intercourse"

in issue 45

"I Changed My Socially Constructed Sexual Identity!" Jenni Olson on The Queer Movie Poster Book — "The butler did it . . . to everyone!"

in issue 44

Commodifying Desire: Sexual Dependency — Where is the love?

in issue 43

Twelve-Tone Cinema: A Scattershot Notebook on Sexual Atonality — Is queerness an angry chord or a beautiful harmony?

Capturing the Beauty of the Beast: Aileen Wuornos, Charlize Theron, and Monster — The "monster" Wuornos and why she won't go away

in issue 42

Keep on Truckin': An Interview with Joe Gage — A gay-porn pioneer speaks

Wheeler & Woolsey Queered — The downright peculiar pleasures of pre-Code Wheeler & Woolsey

O Captain! My Captain! — Master and Commander wants to raise your mast

in issue 40

Sex in Shangri-La: Wakefield Poole on DVD — "No top. No bottom. Just two men discoverin each other."

Unintentional Camp and the Image of Will Smith — Camp — and coded queerness — finds a surprisingly happy home in the films in Will Smith

Homo Varieties: Some Recent Queer and Near-Queer Movies — Hits and misses from the arthouse to the grindhouse

"Fabulous Gowns but No Pussy!" An Interview with Holly Woodlawn — A superstar talks Trash and papayas

in issue 38

Of Horny Hunchbacks and Stitch Bitches: Le Cinema Milligan — If you thought his films were bad, wait till you see his life

Boys on the Side: A Survey of Adult/Youth Relationships in Movies and TV — Surprise — it could be worse

Chained Girls — A Twilight Tale of the Third Sex — Who is that comely, vicious gal plotting mayhem from the shadows? Why, the dyke of 1960s pop culture, of course

in issue 37

Diamonds in the Toilet: The Chelsea Girls — Warhol's trashy, timeless "girls" come a-callin'

The Revolution Starts with Glitter! The Cockettes — The legendary campsters of the counterculture take a bow in this diverting documentary

in issue 36

All Is Fair in Love and War Videos: GLBT Men and Women in the Military — Don’t ask, don’t tell, but do watch

in issue 33

Hand Me That 14-Inch Willy! The Puppet Artistry of Barry Purves — This brilliant Brit’s artistry breathes life into wood and wire

in issue 32

George Cukor: The Valor of Discretion — An affectionate look at one of cinema’s still undervalued masters

Private Eye: Abigail Child in Brief — Child's compulsive visual collages are visual and aural legerdemain

in issue 30

Fall 2000’s Queer Films: Preview! — The tortured queens and killer dykes of yesteryear make way for more rareified queer types this season

Brief Candles: The Films of Warren Sonbert
The work of an avant-garde master now restored

in issue 29

Raging and Flaming: Jack Smith in Retrospect — New York’s pioneering campmeister

Home Movies from Hell: The Films of Luther Price — The master of Super-8 cinema takes us into the cave of the unknown, with extraordinary results

Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour — The 1960s brought back Hellman’s lesbian who vanished three decades earlier in These Three. But why is she dead?

in issue 28

The Lesbian Vanishes: These Three — Lillian Hellman's 1936 film adaptation of The Children's Hour erased the lesbianism from her play.

in issue 27

Laughing Pan: James Broughton — Ecstasy for all! says the pied piper of queer experimental film.

in issue 26

The Day the Bronx Invaded Earth: The Life and Cinema of the Brothers Kuchar — Major figures in the American Underground film movement of the 'sixties, George and Mike Kuchar are the acknowledged pioneers of the camp/pop aesthetic that would influence practically all who came after them, from Warhol and Waters to Vadim and Lynch.

in issue 25

David DeCoteau — The auteur of Petticoat Planet and Retro-Puppetmaster weighs in with his kinky leatherboy arthouse epic Leather Jacket Love Story.

in issue 24

Behind the Mask: Sadie Benning's Pixel Pleasures — Sadie Benning has been a cause celebre in the queer community for almost a decade. An iconoclast even as a teen, she employed the infamous "Pixelvision" camera in most of her early work and continues to use it.

in issue 23

Queer Horror: Decoding Universal's Monsters — The all-pervasive, barely disguised, downright queerness of classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and Dracula's Daughter.

The Sissy Gaze in American Cinema — The cinema sissy is now as rare as rain in the Gobi — but it wasn't always so.

in issue 21

Dark Angel: R. W. Fassbinder — The homely, jowly face, dictatorial blatherings, and ragged leather chaps masked one of the great makers of modern cinema.

in issue 20

Gregory Markopoulos: Seconds in Eternity — How does it happen that a filmmaker once lauded as "the American avant-garde cinema's supreme erotic poet" vanishes entirely from the cultural landscape?

Queer Kisses — What is it about the sight of two men kissing that drives Americans insane?

in issue 19

Sexual Subversion: James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein — No institution — society, religion, marriage, or heterosexuality — was safe from the penetrating queer eye of James Whale. Make way for the homosexual creator!

in issue 17

The Church of Camp — A brief history of San Francisco's Castro Theatre

films

Adam & Steve
The Aggressives
All About My Father
Angel
April's Shower

Beautiful Mystery
Bedrooms and Hallways
Before Stonewall
Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss
Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life
The Birdcage
Body Without Soul
Bombay Boys
Boyfriends
Boys Don't Cry
The Boys in the Band
Breakfast on Pluto
Brokeback Mountain
Brother to Brother
Bugis Street
Burlesk King