Week of Nov 18
This week we have two new Queer documentaries screenings with talent in town. Director Georden West presents their experimental hybrid documentary Playland about the last night at Boston's Playland Café, and legendary costume designer Bob Mackie joins a Q&A following the new documentary about his life, Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion.
Playland
Nov 21, 7:00 pm & Nov 23, 1:00 pm @ Vidiots Eagle Theater
Director Georden West in person
Playland is a boundary-pushing, transdisciplinary, hybrid film centered around the raucous activity of a time-bending night in Boston’s oldest and most notorious gay bar, the Playland Café.
Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion
Nov 20, 7:00 pm @ Laemmle NoHo 7
Subject Bob Mackie in person
Traces the life of the fashion icon on screen and off, highlighting Mackie’s global impact on TV, film, Broadway and concert stages and within fashion and popular culture. The film features Mackie’s most famous collaborators, including Carol Burnett, Cher, Mitzi Gaynor, RuPaul Charles, Bernadette Peters, Pink and Miley Cyrus.
Tickets from Laemmle Theatres >
Spotlight on Gregg Araki
Braindead Studios' spotlight on Gregg Araki continues with the three films in Araki's "Teen Apocalypse Trilogy." Araki followed 1992's angry The Living End with this unofficial "trilogy." The stories don't connect at all, but all three are Gen X slacker films that feature angsty and sexually fluid teens, winking French New Wave references, hallucinations of the end times, killer soundtracks, and dreamy lead man James Duval.
Totally F***ed Up (1993)
Nov 22, 9:30 pm @ Brain Dead Studios
Tickets from Brain Dead Studios >
The Doom Generation (1995)
Nov 23, 7:00 pm @ Brain Dead Studios
Tickets from Brain Dead Studios >
Nowhere (1997)
Nov 24, 8:00 pm @ Brain Dead Studios
Tickets from Brain Dead Studios >
Also This Week
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Nov 20, 1:00 pm & 7:30 pm @ Egyptian Theatre
Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig undergoes a personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an ‘internationally ignored’ but divinely talented rock diva, inhabiting a ‘beautiful gender of one’.
Thelma & Louise
Nov 21, 1:00 pm & 7:15 pm @ Egyptian Theatre
Whilst on a short weekend getaway, Louise shoots a man who had tried to rape Thelma. Due to the incriminating circumstances, they make a run for it and thus a cross country chase ensues for the two fugitives. Along the way, both women rediscover the strength of their friendship and surprising aspects of their personalities and self-strengths in the trying times.
Tickets from American Cinematheque >
But I'm a Cheerleader
Nov 23, 6:45 pm @ Broadwater Black Box
Megan is an all-American girl. A cheerleader. She has a boyfriend. But Megan doesn’t like kissing her boyfriend very much. And she’s pretty touchy with her cheerleader friends. Her conservative parents worry that she must be a lesbian and send her off to “sexual redirection” school, where she must, with other lesbians and gays learn how to be straight.
Parajanov Retrospective
American Cinematheque and the UCLA Film and TV Archive kick off their retrospective of bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov, who was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Nov 23, 7:00 pm @ Egyptian Theatre
Tickets from American Cinematheque >
Queer Film LA Meetup Next Week
The Handmaiden
Nov 25, 7:30 pm @ Vidiots Eagle Theater
Queer Film LA Meetup at 6pm in the lobby bar
Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook adapted the Victorian lesbian con artist psychological thriller Fingersmith into 2016's critically acclaimed The Handmaiden, moving the setting to Japanese-occupied Korea as our main characters set out to seduce and rob a Japanese heiress.
Just Added
By Hook or By Crook
Dec 5, 7:30 pm @ Academy Museum
Filmmakers Harry Dodge, Silas Howard, and Steak House
This ahead-of-its-time low-fi "butch and trans buddy film" about trans friendship and petty crimes, which won numerous jury and audience awards during finally gets its due with a new restoration.
Spartacus
Dec 8, 2:00 pm @ Vidiots Eagle Theater
This restored version of Spartacus contains a homoerotic bath scene originally cut by censors, in which Laurence Olivier's villainous emperor confirms he is bisexual. This censorship, discussed in The Celluloid Closet, was emblematic of the studio environment at the time.
The Wild Party (1929)
Dec 15, 11:00 am @ Academy Museum
Dorothy Arzner was a successful Hollywood director when there were few women, and even fewer out lesbians, at the top of the profession. This new restoration of the pre-code gem was an early talkie, and the earliest surviving film by Arzner.
In Theaters
Chasing Chasing Amy (opens Nov 20)
A documentary that examines the complex legacy of Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy (1997) on LGBTQ+ people and its life-saving impact on director Sav Rodgers.