LGBTQ Resources: Films
General resource guide for LGBTQ topics
Alexander Street Video - Coming Out Trans
Alex, Andrea, Debra, Elijah, Grady, Katrina, Morgan, Patrick, Safonia, Shawn and Susan Kimberly talk candidly about the challenges they encounter in their daily lives before, during and after transitioning and how in the end they all strive to come to a place of acceptance and fulfillment.
On a single cross-searchable platform, users have a completely integrated online repository of Alexander Street Video titles that your institution subscribes to or owns, including VAST: Academic Video Online (a large, multidisciplinary video product with nearly 17,000 videos and continuing to grow), along with individual discipline collections in history, art and architecture, business, counseling and therapy, dance, opera, theatre, musical performance, anthropology, health and rehabilitation, opera, nursing, science, women’s studies, black studies, LGBT studies, and more.
Documentaries - Selected
-
After Stonewall: From the riots to the millennium
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 24591 DVD)Publication Date: 2005Sequel to the film Before Stonewall, this documentary chronicles gay and lesbian history over the last 30 years of the 20th century, from AIDS to vicious slaying of Matthew Shepherd. -
Almost there
Publication Date: 2003A couple that dares to change their life, dares to deal with personal fears, dares to search for happiness...and most of all, dares to make a documentary which carefully explores the beauty and dificulties of intimacy, sexual identity, and the complexity of family relationships-all difficult to examine, unless we turn the camera upon ourselves. Yehuda and Alexis leave Tel-Aviv and travel trhrough Greece, finding a new home in Mykonos.
Greek & Hebrew with English subtitles. -
Before Stonewall: The making of a gay and lesbian community
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 24590 DVD)Publication Date: 2004Traces the social, political and cultural history of homosexuality in America from the 1920s to 1969; the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement after a police raid on Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City; and the three-day riot that followed. -
The Believers
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 29265 DVD)Publication Date: 2006Built around the lives of 15 founding members of the world's first transgender gospel choir, the film portrays the choir's dilemma-- how to reconcile their gender identity with the widespread belief that changing one's gender goes against the word of God. -
Call Me Troy
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 29256 DVD)Publication Date: 2007A documentary about the life and times of Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Chuch, the first church to recognize the spiritual needs of the gay community. He was also the first openly gay person to serve on the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Rights. In 1969, he performed the first public same-sex wedding in the United States and in 1970 he filed the first lawsuit seeking legal recognition for same-sex marriages. Perry has been on the forefront of the battle for gay rights. -
The Celluloid Closet
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 10763 DVD)Publication Date: 2001ootage from over 120 films shows the changing face of homosexuality (both male and female) in the movies from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s. Many noted actors, writers and commentators provide funny and insightful anecdotes regarding the history of the role of gay men and lesbians in the movies. -
Coming out : voices of gay and lesbian teens and their families
Publication Date: 2008In this video documentary, you will watch real interviews with gay and lesbian teenagers and their parents as they share their experiences of coming out. You will also hear expert commentary by Dr. Wendy Rosen on the special issues these teenagers face at home and at school, as well as the different stages and processes they and their families go through in order to fully embrace their sexuality. You will learn about the different stages teens may go through in the coming-out process, including isolation, alienation, denial, and finally acceptance and finding community; become informed of the special needs of gay and lesbian youth including finding gay and lesbian role models, supportive peer groups, and acceptance from family; and understand the pressures and difficulties, including implicit and explicit homophobia, that make coming out a challenging process for teenagers. -
Genderf*kation a gender emancipation
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 40894 DVD)Publication Date: 2011Genderf*kation: A Gender Emancipation," is the story of six individuals and their journey through the social, religious and political landscapes of a society that struggles to understand or allows for gender variations. This documentary includes provocative interviews with professionals and outreach members who are active in this community to help shed light on a very unfamiliar subject. -
Gen silent
Call Number: Hardin Library for Health Sciences Circulation Desk Media (Video record 40274 DVD)Publication Date: 2011Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender older people who fought the first battles for equality now face so much fear of discrimination, bullying and abuse in the care setting that many are hiding their lives to survive. Thousands are dying earlier than their straight counterparts because they are isolated and afraid to ask for help. But a growing number of people are fighting to keep their elders from being silenced -
Growing Up Trans
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 41473 DVD)Publication Date: 2015An intimate exploration of the struggles and choices facing transgender kids and their parents. Through moving, personal stories of children, parents, and doctors, the film examines new medical interventions increasingly being offered at younger ages. -
History Lessons
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 20129 DVD)Publication Date: 2000This film explores lesbian images from 1896 until 1969, focusing on pervading images prior to Stonewall, the film exposes popular representations of lesbian culture. -
Matt Shepard is a friend of mine
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 41892 DVD)Publication Date: 2013Revisits the much-publicized case of Matthew Shepard, the young man tortured and killed in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming for being gay. Family and friends recount Shepard's life and the circumstances surrounding his murder. -
No secret anymore the times of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 38709 DVD)Publication Date: 2003Chronicles the lives of two women who have been partners in love and political struggle for half a century. San Francisco icons, Del Martin and Phylllis Lyon are known as the founders of the modern lesbian civil rights movement. No Secret Anymore follows them through six decades, tracing the emergence of lesbians from the fear of discovery to the expectation of equality. -
Paris is Burning
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 21097 DVD )Publication Date: 1990A documentary about the young homosexual men of Harlem who originated "voguing" and turned these stylized dance competitions into glittering expressions of fierce personal pride. A story of street-wise urban survival, gay self-affirmation, and the pursuit of a desperate dream.
Originally produced as a motion picture in 1990. -
Raid of the Rainbow Lounge
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 42590 DVD)Publication Date: 2016A full length documentary film recounting the events surrounding the widely publicized and controversial raid of a Fort Worth, Texas gay bar in 2009 -
Speak up! improving the lives of gay, bisexual & transgendered youth
Publication Date: 2002Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) students and their allies face unique challenges of violence and harassment in schools. SPEAK UP! explores what these students and their allies have done to transform their schools into safer and more welcoming environments. Interviews with students, parents, teachers, administrators and national activists highlight not only the need for transformation, but offer resources and advice for those actively working for change. Featuring interviews with Judy Shepard, Danny and Julie from MTV's Real World New Orleans and actor/musician Anthony Rapp, this innovative video offers a powerful look at the ways in which individuals are reclaiming their classrooms and hallways as spaces safe for GLBT students. -
The times of Harvey Milk
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 32487 DVD)Publication Date: 2011One of the first feature documentaries to address gay life in America, it's a work of advocacy itself, bringing Milk's message of hope and equality to a wider audience. -
Trans
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 35944 DVD)Publication Date: 2012TRANS is an up-close and very personal journey into the transgender world through the memorable stories and the unusual lives of a remarkable cast of characters. These are the stories of boys and girls, men and woman ... and all the shades in between. Stories of extraordinary people who face fear, discrimination, ignorance and violence in the hopes they might one day be able to live ... ordinary lives. -
Transgeneration
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 22310 DVD)Publication Date: 2005Follows four American college students as they prepare for gender reassignment. They discuss their lives, their hopes and setbacks, and deal with varying reactions from family and friends. -
Trantasia
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 31901 DVD)Publication Date: 2007A behind-the-scenes look at the first-ever 'World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant.' Explores the intensely private and moving stories of its -
Word is out stories of some of our lives
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 33859 DVD)Publication Date: 1977 (original release)Interviews with 26 diverse people who speak out about their experiences as gay men and women.
Feature Films - Selected
-
Call Number: Main Media Collection Stacks (Video record 11538 DVD)Publication Date: 2001n this multi-award-winning new cult classic, a trans front woman of an East German punk rock band tells her life story in song form, of falling in love with an American soldier, getting a botched gender surgery (hence the "angry inch"), and of being left for another man. It's less TransAmerica and more Rocky Horror, but John Cameron Mitchell, who wrote and directed it, is smashing in the title role. -
Beginners
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 33651 DVD)Publication Date: 2011A young man is rocked by two announcements from his elderly father: that he has terminal cancer, and that he has a young male lover. -
Blue is the Warmest Colour
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 37893 DVD)Publication Date: 2014The colorful, electrifying romance that took the Cannes Film Festival by storm courageously dives into a young woman's experiences of first love and sexual awakening. Blue is the Warmest Color stars the remarkable newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos as a high schooler who, much to her own surprise, plunges into a thrilling relationship with a female twentysomething art student, played by Léa Seydoux. Directed by Adbellatif Kechiche, this finely detailed, intimate epic sensitively renders the erotic abandon of youth. It has captivated international audiences and been widely embraced as a defining love story for the new century. -
Brokeback Mountain
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 19959 DVD)Publication Date: 2006It's 1963, a time in the United States when life was simple, straightforward and the lines between the sexes and sex roles were crisply drawn and severely delineated. Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist find themselves thrown together when they are hired to tend sheep in the remote area of Brokeback Mountain, Wyoming. Because of the job, the two are forced to spend many hours together alone in the wild. Ennis and Jack are inexorably drawn to each other through their proximity, loneliness and through a shared lack of tenderness and emotion in their lives and are emotionally, physically and psychically bonded to each other almost from the start. -
But I'm a cheerleader
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 37654 DVD)Publication Date: 2003In the satire, a naive teenager is sent to rehab camp when her straitlaced parents and friends suspect her of being a lesbian. -
C.R.A.Z.Y.
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 22659 DVD)This French-Canadian film about Zac, a young gay guy growing up in the '70s in a homophobic environment, is a coming-of-age story on its surface but a father-son story at its core. Gervais, Zac’s father, struggles with accepting his son’s homosexuality, and Zac aims to make his father proud (often failing), transforming this into a story that transcends time period or setting. -
The Danish Girl
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 42065 DVD)Publication Date: 2016he remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda's marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer. -
Go Fish
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 19455 DVD)Publication Date: 2001Kia, a professor, speculates with her students about who might be a lesbian in American society. She is involved with Evy and they would like Kia's roommate, Max, to meet a woman. Kia sets her up with Ely, an ex-student of hers who is in the process of terminating a long-distance relationship. They finally go out on a date and everyone insists on getting all the details. -
Happy Together
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 8833 DVD)Publication Date: 1998Yiu Fai and Po Wing left Hong Kong for a great waterfall in South America, but in the end are stuck on the streets of Buenos Aires. Yiu Fai's life takes on a new spin, while Po Wing's life shatters continually in contrast.
Chinese with English subtitles -
Milk
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 28078 DVD)Publication Date: 2009His life changed history, his courage changed lives. Harvey Milk is a middle-aged New Yorker who, after moving to San Francisco, becomes a Gay Rights activist and city politician. On his third attempt, he is elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977, the first openly-gay man to be elected to public office in the United States. The following year, both he and the city's mayor, George Moscone, are shot to death by former city supervisor, Dan White, who blames his former colleagues for denying White's attempt to rescind his resignation from the board. Based on the true story of Harvey Milk. -
My beautiful laundrette
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 41017 DVD)Publication Date: 1985An uncommon love story that takes place between a young South London Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke), who decides to open an upscale laundromat to make his family proud, and his childhood friend, a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis), who volunteers to help make his dream a reality. This culture-clash comedy is also a subversive work of social realism, which dares to address racism, homophobia, and sociopolitical marginalization in Margaret Thatcher's England. -
My Own Private Idaho
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 16896 DVD)Publication Date: 1991Two young men, each on the streets for his own reasons, become friends. Mike, is a narcoleptic street hustler haunted by memories of childhood and obsessed by finding his mother. Scott is a runaway rich kid who's on a personal crusade to find the meaning of life. Together they're lost in a bizarre world of wealthy strangers and stranger than life adventures. -
Pride
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 40259 DVD)Publication Date: 2014U.K. gay activists work to assist miners during their extended strike of the National Union of Mineworkers in the summer of 1984. -
Rent
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 20825 DVD)Publication Date: 2005Focuses on the year in the life of a group of friends in New York's East Village. The "bohemians" live carefree lives of art, music, sex, and drugs. It is carefree until Mark, an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger, an aspiring songwriter, find out they owe a year's rent to Benny. Benny is a former friend who had promised them free rent when he married the landlord's daughter. Roger has also attracted the attention of his downstairs neighbor, Mimi. Mark's former girlfriend, Maureen, has found a new romance in a lawyer named Joanne. Philosophy professor Tom finds his soul mate in drag queen Angel. With this being the late 1980s, the threat of AIDS is always present. -
A Single Man
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 32271 DVD)Publication Date: 2010After the death of his longtime partner, a British college professor in Los Angeles struggles to find meaning in his life. As he dwells in the past, he begins to contemplate suicide. A series of events and encounters will lead him to question if there really is a meaning to his life after all. -
Tomboy
by
Publication Date: 2012Laure is 10 years old and a tomboy. On arrival in a new neighborhood, she lets Lisa and her crowd believe that she is a boy. Summer becomes a big playground and Laure pretends to be "Mikael", a boy like the others, different enough to get the attention of Lisa, who falls in love with him. Laure takes advantage of her new identity as if the end of the summer would never reveal her unsettling secret.
French with English subtitles -
Transamerica
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 20446 DVD)Publication Date: 2006ree is a pre-operative, male-to-female transsexual, who holds down two jobs and saves every penny so that she can pay for the one last operation that will make her a woman. One day, however, she receives a strange phone call. On the line is Toby, apparently her son, who must be the product of a somewhat clumsy sexual encounter years ago when she was a man. He is in New York in jail. Bree flies from Los Angeles to New York in order to get the boy out of jail. The boy is handed over to her without a word of explanation and Toby believes the woman to be some Christian missionary determined to convert reprobates to Jesus. However, she finds out that the boy just wants to escape from her and hitchhike to Los Angeles. She persuades him to accompany her back to the west coast. -
Tru Loved
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 29939 DVD)Publication Date: 2009Like all teens, Tru struggles to fit in. But when her lesbian moms decide to move the family to a conservative suburban town, Tru's life becomes complicated by sexual politics, closed minds, and closeted friends. -
Weekend
Call Number: Main Library Media Collection (Video record 35156 DVD)Publication Date: 2011A one-night stand develops into a weekend-long idyll for two very different young men in the English Midlands, in an emotionally naked film that's both a snapshot of the complexities of contemporary gay living, and a portrait of a love affair.
About this guide
Guide content supports the teaching and research goals of multiple departments on campus. Content represents a non-exhaustive selection of essential resources and tools for engaging a wide range of backgrounds and viewpoints.