For Pride Month, The Prince Charles Cinema and Funeral Parade are proud to present Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston’s invaluable document of NYC’s drag scene during the 1980s.

This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of Black and Latine queer life in Reagan’s America. Made over seven years, the film follows rival fashion “houses” and examines the drag community’s rituals of balls and “voguing” – flamboyant acts of resistance in the face of the AIDS crisis and rampant homophobia. Featuring ballroom legends such as Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza, Paris is Burning remains a classic of both documentary and queer cinema.

With an introduction from film curator Sarah Cleary.
 

When inexperienced criminal Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino) leads a bank robbery in Brooklyn, things quickly go wrong, and a hostage situation develops. As Sonny and his accomplice, Sal Naturile (John Cazale), try desperately to remain in control, a media circus develops and the FBI arrives, creating even more tension. Gradually, Sonny's surprising motivations behind the robbery are revealed, and his standoff with law enforcement moves toward its inevitable end.

When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.

A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.

In this refreshingly unique comedy, two girls, PJ and Josie, start a fight club as a way to lose their virginities to cheerleaders. And their bizarre plan works! The fight club gains traction, and soon the most popular girls in school are beating each other up in the name of self-defense. But PJ and Josie find themselves in over their heads and in need of a way out before their plan is exposed.

In Berlin in 1931, American cabaret singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) meets British academic Brian Roberts (Michael York), who is finishing his university studies. Despite Brian's confusion over his sexuality, the pair become lovers, but the arrival of the wealthy and decadent playboy Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem) complicates matters for them both. This love triangle plays out against the rise of the Nazi party and the collapse of the Weimar Republic.

Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) arrives in Las Vegas with only a suitcase and a dream of becoming a top showgirl. She quickly befriends Molly (Gina Ravera), who works at the high-profile Stardust Hotel, and lands a job at a seedy strip club. A chance meeting with Cristal (Gina Gershon), the Stardust's marquee dancer, and her powerful boyfriend, Zack (Kyle MacLachlan), brings Nomi one step closer to realizing her dream. But, as she ascends to the top, Nomi begins to wonder if it's all worth it.

Akerman’s ambiguous triptych was based on her experiences hitchhiking from Paris to Brussels. A woman (played by the filmmaker) holes up in a room, obsessively eating sugar and rearranging furniture. Then we follow her hunt for love and connection – first with a truck driver, then an ex-lover. With its uninterrupted erotic-free ten-minute lesbian sex scene, this is one of the most radical and assured sequences in any feature debut from the 1970s.

It's the summer of 1983, and precocious 17-year-old Elio Perlman is spending the days with his family at their 17th-century villa in Lombardy, Italy. He soon meets Oliver, a handsome doctoral student who's working as an intern for Elio's father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of their surroundings, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever.

The acerbic new chapter of Louise Weard’s visionary, post-modern trans epic, Castration Movie, chapter iii. Junior Ghosts—Premorphic Drift. Here, we follow Izzy (Avalon Fast) who is desperately clawing for any source of (mis)information to sabotage her partner (Henri Gillespi)’s transition. 

Weard confronts the audience across two hours of uncomfortable truths, exposing the grotesque behaviours of cis and trans people alike with razor-sharp precision; Junior Ghosts is a bold satirical splurge of female paranoia, biological essentialism, and the horrors of a Mumsnet echo chamber.

Content warning: contains scenes of graphic violence and sex, themes of suicide and homophobic and transphobic language.

On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.

On Friday 6th February, join us for a special Q&A with Director Jamie Babbit, presented by Donkey Tail Film Club and the Queer Filmmakers’ Network, moderated by Nora Dahle Borchgrevink, director of Donkey Tail. 

Megan (Natasha Lyonne) considers herself a typical American girl. She excels in school and cheerleading, and she has a handsome football-playing boyfriend, even though she isn't that crazy about him. So she's stunned when her parents decide she's gay and send her to True Directions, a boot camp meant to alter her sexual orientation. While there, Megan meets a rebellious and unashamed teen lesbian, Graham (Clea DuVall). Though Megan still feels confused, she starts to have feelings for Graham.

In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters (River Phoenix) is a gay hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.