Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor) works long hours on his family’s remote farm in the north of England. He numbs the daily frustration of his lonely existence with nightly binge-drinking at the local pub and casual sex. But when a handsome Romanian migrant worker (Alec Secareanu) arrives to take up temporary work on the family farm, Johnny suddenly finds himself having to deal with emotions he has never felt before.
As they begin working closely together during lambing season, an intense relationship starts to form which could change Johnny’s life forever. Captivating and broodingly beautiful, GOD’S OWN COUNTRY is the award winning debut feature from writer/director Francis Lee. Bracingly open hearted, this is a thrillingly romantic story set in the heart of rural Yorkshire. Both poignant and moving, this finely crafted British film features a host of standout performances, marking it out as an absolute must see.
What happens when the hardest team in the Sunday Soccer league comes up against a gay team (pun intended) and finds they've finally met their match? Watch and wince as fledging referee Elton Glixton struggles to control this testosterone tsunami as rude-boy meets bum-boy in this outrageous new British comedy set in the crazy gung-ho world of 5-a-side footie. KickOff is the latest and craziest balls-bonanza from award-winning writer/director Rikki Beadle-Blair (FIT, Stonewall, Metrosexuality).
Starring: Jay Brown, Rikki Beadle Blair, Jason Maza, Stephen Hoo, Ludvig Bonin
When you are a tall strapping man who dresses like a woman for a living, finding a pair of sexy but durable shoes can be worth your weight in gold. Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor) - a drag queen also known as Simon--finds her shoe salvation in straight-laced Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton), who has inherited his father's shoe factory. Unable to pay the bills making traditional loafers and wingtips, Charlie agrees to make Lola a pair of kinky boots that turn out to be so fabulous the pair end up going into business together. They face a few obstacles, such as the bawdy union workers who aren't too keen on taking orders from a drag queen who's more of a man than they are. Then there's Charlie's posh real estate girlfriend, who wants to convert the factory into pricey condos. While the movie doesn't provide any real surprises (or even any scenes as suggestive as its title might suggest), the film (which is loosely based on a true story) is highly entertaining that will delight fans of both comedy and shoes.
Starring: Joel Edgerton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Linda Bassett, Kellie Bright, Josh Cole
Not truly gay cinema per se, but still good fun and plently of camp humour.
The second of the Merchant/Ivory films (A Room with a View, Howard's End), Maurice deals with a theme few period pieces dare mention--a young man's struggle with his homosexuality. It's not just a gay coming-of-age story, however. The hero wrestles with British class society as much as his personal and sexual identity.
Starring:- James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott and Simon Callow
The film opens on a stormy, windswept beach, as an older man awkwardly instructs young, fatherless Maurice Hall (James Wilby) in the "sacred mysteries" of sex. The same turbulent, wordless struggle with passion lasts throughout this slowly evolving, beautifully filmed story. Novelist E M Forster's brainy, British melodrama hinges on choice and compulsion, as the pensive hero falls for two completely different men. First comes frail, suppressed Clive (Hugh Grant), who wants nothing more than classical Platonic harmony ... and a straight lifestyle. (Grant's performance is so convincing, one wonders how he ever became a heterosexual sex symbol.) After Clive's wedding, Maurice turns to hypnosis to cure his unspeakable longings. Unfortunately, his "cure" is interrupted by Clive's lustful, brooding, barely literate gamekeeper Scudder (Rupert Graves), a worker more at home gutting rabbits than discussing the classics. Maurice's love for a "social inferior" forces him to confront his illicit desire and his ingrained class snobbery
Set within the Asian community in London, My Beautiful Launderette is an unusual love story concerned with identity and entrepreneurial spirit during the Thatcher years. Omar (Gordon Warnecke) takes over the running of his wheller-dealer Uncle's launderette with the intentionof turning it into a glittering palace of commerical success. When he employs childhood firned and ex-National Front member Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) they become lovers as well as working partners. However, complications soon ensure as the anger of Johnny's deserted gang begins to build and Omar is forced to face increasingly difficult family issues. Written by Hanif Kureishi and skilfully directed by Stephen Frears, My Beautiful Launderette tackles the difficult issues of racism, bigotry, violence and politics in early 80s Britain and still manages to be compassionate, humourous and hugely entertaining.
Considered lost for many years, Pink Narcissus is an astounding discovery - an unwavering celebration of the male body within a fantasy world of epic indulgence.
This is a breathtaking and outrageous erotic poem focussing on the daydreams of a beautiful boy prostitute who, from the seclusion of his ultra-kitsch apartment, conceives a series of interlinked narcissistic fantasies populated by matadors, dancing boys, slaves and leather-clad bikers.
The film was shrouded in mystery following its 1971 release, its creator credited only as 'Anonymous', before being rediscovered and revealed as the work of artist and photographer James Bidgood. Its cult status endures as does adoration for its star, the gorgeous and enigmatic Bobby Kendall.
With its highly charged hallucinogenic quality, its atmosphere of lush decadence, and its explicit erotic power, Pink Narcissus is a landmark of gay cinema.
The life story of controversial 1960s playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman), revealed in flashback after his murder by lover Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina). Born in Leicester, Orton moves to London and enjoys an openly gay relationship with Halliwell in their famous Islington flat. However, when Orton achieves spectacular success with such plays as 'What the Butler Saw' and 'Loot', Halliwell begins to feel alienated and the pair's future looks increasingly uncertain.
Starring: Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Walters, Wallace Shawn
Set in the summer of 1984 – Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is on strike. At the Gay Pride March in London, a group of gay and lesbian activists decides to raise money to support the families of the striking miners. But there is a problem. The Union seems embarrassed to receive their support. But the activists are not deterred. They decide to ignore the Union and go direct to the miners. They identify a mining village in deepest Wales and set off in a mini bus to make their donation in person. And so begins the extraordinary story of two seemingly alien communities who form a surprising and ultimately triumphant partnership.
Definitive extended edition of Channel 4's controversial drama series. Stuart Jones (Aidan Gillen) and Vince Tyler (Craig Kelly) are gay friends living in Manchester. Both 29 years of age, they are beginning to question the direction their lives are taking when they meet wild 15-year-old Nathan Maloney (Charlie Hunnam) who shakes up their world with his arrival on the scene.
'It's hard to believe that 15 years have past since this was first shown on Channel 4 and yet remains so vivid in the mind. Series 1 was a classic and groundbreaking at the time for a television series and, although series 2 was a bit of a cash in, it was still pretty good.
The first and only film shot entirely in subtitled Latin, Sebastiane is Derek Jarman's first work as a director (though he shared the job with the less well-known Paul Humfress) and is a strange combination of gay nudie movie, pocket-sized Ancient Roman epic and meditation upon the image of Saint Sebastian. It opens with the Lindsay Kemp dance troupe romping around with huge fake phalluses to represent the Ken Russell-style decadence of the court of the Emperor Diocletian in AD 303, then decamps to Tuscany as Diocletian's favourite guard Sebastian (Leonardo Treviglio) is demoted to ordinary soldier and dispatched to a backwater barracks because the Emperor (Robert Medley) suspects him of being a covert Christian. The bulk of the film consists of athletic youths in minimal thongs romping around the countryside, soaking themselves down between bouts of manly horseplay or sylvan frolic. It all comes to a bad end as the lecherous but guilt-ridden commanding officer Severus (Barney James) fails to cop off with Sebastian and instead visits floggings and tortures upon his naked torso, finally ordering his men to riddle the future saint with arrows, thus securing him a place in cultural history. The public schoolboy cleverness of scripting dialogue in Latin--a popular soldier's insult is represented by the Greek "Oedipus"--works surprisingly well, with the cast reeling off profane Roman dialogue as if it were passionate Italian declarations rather than marbled classical sentences. The film suffers from the not-uncommon failing that the best-looking actor is given the largest role but delivers the weakest performance: Treviglio's Sebastian is a handsome cipher, far less interesting than the rest of the troubled, bullying, awkward or horny soldiers in the platoon. Peter Hinwood, famous for the title role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, can be glimpsed in the palace orgy. The countryside looks as good as the cast, and Brian Eno delivers an evocative, ambient-style score. - Kim Newman.
Starring: Barney James, Neil Kennedy, Leonardo Treviglio, Richard Warwick, Donald Dunham
