5th Annual Boston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival

In modern-day Berlin (1987), Frau Kutowski goes insane, believing herself to be the (real-life) notorious Anita Berber, a nude art dancer/drug addict/scandalous figure of post-WWI Berlin. (Berber died of tuberculosis in 1928, having achieved significant success and recognition throughout the dance world.) Frau Kutowski is placed in a mental hospital, where in her own mind she acts out Berber’s final days, including in her fantasies the hospital’s staff and patients, to represent Anita’s friends and associates.

In Paris, Bertrand, 12, runs away from home. While trying to steal something to eat in a supermarket, he meets Boris who saves him from getting into trouble and lets him stay at his home. Boris is an odd sort of man and Bertrand is an odd sort of boy. They gradually become acquainted…

Diane and Dora are two prostitutes who begin to rebel against their lot in life. Meanwhile, in another part of town, a murderer is at large.

A young hustler tries to get drug money by selling a boy to a middle-aged man; his plans are disrupted when the kid dies.

A mysterious teenager named Ángelo cares for Klaus, a German doctor with a dark past who lives trapped in an iron lung.

Mala Noche is the film debut from director Gus Van Sant. The film portrays the unanswered love of an American man toward a young Mexican man.

Wanda is a dominatrix who runs a gallery in a building on the Hamburg waterfront, where audiences pay for the privilege of watching her humiliate her slaves. She is a business woman who smashes sexual stereotypes and social taboos with icy self-possession and an enigmatic smile. As artist she specializes in the staging of elaborate BDSM fantasies and her affairs transgress the usual boundaries of personal and professional life. Along the way she leaves her German lesbian lover, a shoe fetishist, for an American “trainee,” and does more than step on the toes of the male performer who has broken the rules of the master-slave relationship by falling in love with her.

A German woman travels to San Francisco to find her mother, but winds up distracted by the sexually flamboyant culture of the city.