Art House Film Club: Criterion Channel celebrates Pride Month

The service:

For $99 a year, the Criterion Channel is hands down the best streaming service for art house film lovers. Every film on this site is lovingly curated by film lovers into thematic groups, instead of chosen by creepy AI recommendation engines like other services. For Pride Month, why not start a free trial?

https://www.criterionchannel.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase

About the Pride collection:

Proud, rebellious, colorful, intimate, and frank, these visions of LGBTQ+ life include beloved modern classics as well as hidden gems. From staples of the art-house canon (JE TU IL ELLE, QUERELLE) to highlights of the New Queer Cinema explosion (ZERO PATIENCE, THE LIVING END) and contemporary showstoppers from emerging talents (PIER KIDS, SHAKEDOWN), these films represent just a sample of the wide world of queer cinema, but they offer a taste of its breadth, creativity, and defiance in the face of adversity.

the Criterion Channel

Art House Film Club’s Choice,
TOP 3 Films in this collection:

• Querelle
  Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film is a deliriously stylized tale of hothouse lust and simmering violence. Set amid an expressionistic soundstage vision of a French sea port, this daring adaptation of a novel by Jean Genet recounts the tragedy of a handsome sailor (Brad Davis) as he is drawn into a vortex of sibling rivalry, murder, and explosive sexuality. Completed just before Fassbinder’s sudden death at age thirty-seven, QUERELLE finds the director pushing his embrace of artifice and taboo-shattering depiction of queer desire to new extremes.
• Paris Is Burning
  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—PARIS IS BURNING brings it, celebrating the joy of movement, the force of eloquence, and the draw of community.
• The Living End
  A gay THELMA & LOUISE for the New Queer Cinema movement, Gregg Araki’s couple-on-the-run romance follows two HIV-positive lovers—hustler Luke (Mike Dytri) and film critic Jon (Craig Gilmore)—who, with nothing left to lose, embark on a violent cross-country crime spree, with homophobes as their primary target. Laced with savage humor, THE LIVING END channels the hopelessness felt by gay people during the AIDS crisis into an explosion of undiluted existential fury.