A chronological look at films by, for, or about gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain". Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, documentaries and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?

In the Realms of the Unreal
2004
7.2/10

The Celluloid Closet
1996
7.2/10

Disclosure
2020
7.8/10

Welcome to Chechnya
2020
6.9/10

Cameraperson
2016
6.7/10

Maidentrip
2014
7.1/10

This Changes Everything
2019
6.2/10

A Decade Under the Influence
2003
7.9/10

The Last Repair Shop
2024
7.5/10

Halftime
2022
6.8/10

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
2018
5.9/10

Being James Bond
2021
7.8/10

Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition
2026
8.7/10

McQueen
2018
7.5/10

How to Survive a Plague
2012
6.8/10

Seduced and Abandoned
2013
6.2/10

I Am Ali
2014
6.8/10

The Red Pill
2016
7.5/10

She's Beautiful When She's Angry
2014
7.4/10

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
2013
6.9/10
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
1991
7.9/10