The voices of five gay men who cruised for sex at the World Trade Center in the 1980s and 1990s haunt the sanitized, commerce-driven landscape that is the newly rebuilt Freedom Tower campus.
Social & External
The people behind it
Billy Miller
Self
Dale Corvino
The story behind Blondie's album Parallel Lines, which sold 16 million copies and captured the spirit of 1970s New York at a time of poverty, crime and an exploding artistic life.
Paul Weller's musical rebirth unfolds as he records the solo album Wild Wood in 1992-93, embracing analog sound and revisiting his roots, captured through new interviews with Weller, band members, producer, and collaborators.
The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?
Iran, January 16th, 1979. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi flees after being overthrown. Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Tehran and proclaims the Islamic Republic on April 1st, 1979. In the same year, Saddam Hussein seizes power in Iraq and, after several border skirmishes, attacks Iran on September 22nd, 1980, initiating a cruel war that will last eight years. Since its outbreak, correspondent Saeid Sadeghi documented it from its beginning to its bitter end.
Many members of the Dutch Underground were gay and lesbian. This film pays homage to them and recounts their story.
A recording of a play about the intangible impacts AIDS has on a community. This is a moving, beautifully photographed combination of theater and documentary that captures the incredible excitement of live theater and intensifies the power of the play's message.
A look on transvestites and transsexuals in early 80's Paris. The documentary focuses on Elisa, a Brazilian transvestite and ends with a filming of a surgical operation male to female.
Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's PBS documentary tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Over the course of their sessions, what began as an artist-model relationship developed into something more. Now officially BFs (boyfriends), Wilfrid continues to draw Theo regularly and has somewhat effortlessly amassed hundreds of drawings that were brought together for an exhibition appropriately titled ‘Drawings of my BF’. As Wilfred studies Theo, and Theo returns his gaze, the two lovers discuss the romantic ideals and human realities of the sketcher-subject dynamic and the role that creating art together has played in their lasting connection.
An investigation of Edward Brezinski, an ambitious, charismatic Lower East Side painter hell-bent on sucess, who thwarted his own career with antics that roiled NYC’s art elite. Brezinski’s quest for fame gives an intimate portrait of the art world’s attitude towards success and failure, fame and fortune, notoriety and erasure.
Cruelty, psychological and sexual violence, humiliations: reality television seems to have gone mad. His debut in the early 2000s inaugurated a new era in the history of the audio-visual. Fifty years of archives trace the evolution of entertainment: how the staging of intimacy during the 80s opened new territories, how the privatization of the biggest channels has changed the relationship with the spectator. With the contribution of specialists, including philosopher Bernard Stiegler, this documentary demonstrates how emotion has made way for the exacerbation of the most destructive impulses.
Look around. Everything you see and touch can taste like vanilla.
Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the ancient Christian practice of preserving holy relics and the largely forgotten art form that went with it, the reliquary. Fragments of bone or fabric placed inside a bejewelled shrine, a sculpted golden head or even a life-sized silver hand were, and still are, objects of religious devotion believed to have the power to work miracles. The documentary features interviews with art historian Sister Wendy Beckett and Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum.
May 27th, 1971 was a rainy day. In the small town Radevormwald, the world seems to be still in order. But on this day, 46 people die in a train crash, amongst them 41 schoolchildren. Since then, Radevormwald has been connected with one of the worst railway catastrophes of Germany. The touching documentary reconstructs the tragedy and shows how much the event still influences the life in the town until today.
After the death of his parents, a gay man comes back to his village to live in his small world of happiness, dreams, sadness and loneliness.
The full story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God.' The 1972 Munich Olympics were interrupted by Palestinian terrorists taking Israeli athletes hostage. Besides footage taken at the time, we see interviews with the surviving terrorist, Jamal Al Gashey, and various officials detailing exactly how the police, lacking an anti-terrorist squad and turning down help from the Israelis, botched the operation.
The film tells the story of the LGBTQIAP+ scene in Teresina and works as a rescue of street culture. In all, ten characters tell their stories through the screen , building the web that leads to a marginal and parallel reality. A rescue that comes from the 80s, through names like Samantha Menina, Monique Santos and many other important figures in this process.
Canada as a refuge for LBGTQ+ immigrants: Yazan from Iraq, Nata from Central Africa, Aida from Iran and Eilyn from Colombia all had to flee their homelands, where violence, threats, hate and rejection prevented them from living their lives and expressing their sexual orientation openly. All they wanted was to be free. From Beirut to Montreal, Quebec City or Vancouver, this ensemble documentary follows the journeys of four people who are determined to change their future. From the terrifying realities they had to flee to the heartbreaking sacrifices they were forced to make, Renaître is a vibrant and luminous tribute to their quiet strength.
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.
Though legendary lyricist Howard Ashman died far too young, his impact on Broadway, movies, and the culture at large were incalculable. Told entirely through rare archival footage and interviews with Ashman’s family, friends, associates, and longtime partner Bill Lauch, Howard is an intimate tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent and a rousing celebration of musical storytelling itself.
Experience the events of September 11, 2001 through the eyes of President Bush and his closest advisors as they personally detail the crucial hours and key decisions from that historic day.
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
A story of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time.
A documentary examining the decade of the 1970s as a turning point in American cinema. Some of today's best filmmakers interview the influential directors of that time.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
Through archival interviews and footage, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley relive the arc of their Wham! career, from 70s best buds to 80s pop icons.
In 1972, a seemingly typical shoestring budget pornographic film was made in a Florida hotel: "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace. This film would surpass the wildest expectation of everyone involved to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. It caught the public imagination which met the spirit of the times, even as the self-appointed guardians of public morality struggled to suppress it, and created, for a brief moment, a possible future where sexuality in film had a bold artistic potential. This film covers the story of the making of this controversial film, its stunning success, its hysterical opposition along with its dark side of mob influence and allegations of the on set mistreatment of the film's star.
Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
Studio 54 was the epicenter of 70s hedonism - a place that not only redefined the nightclub, but also came to symbolize an entire era. Its co-owners, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, seemed to come out of nowhere to suddenly preside over a new kind of New York society. Now, 39 years after the velvet rope was first slung across the club's hallowed threshold, a feature documentary tells the real story behind the greatest club of all time.
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
The definitive documentary on the history of nudity in feature films from the early silent days to the present, studying the changes in morality that led to the use of nudity in films while emphasizing the political, sociological and artistic changes that shaped that history. Skin will also study the gender inequality in presenting nude images in motion pictures and will follow the revolution that has created nude gender equality in feature films today.
For decades, a nice Jewish couple ran Circus of Books, a porn shop and epicenter for gay LA. Their director daughter documents their life and times.
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
An on-the-scene documentary following the events of September 11, 2001 from an insider's view, through the lens of two French filmmakers who simply set out to make a movie about a rookie NYC fireman and ended up filming the tragic event that changed our lives forever.
John Cazale was in only five films – The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: Part II, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter – each was nominated for Best Picture. Yet today most people don't even know his name. I KNEW IT WAS YOU is a fresh tour through movies that defined a generation.