51 years ago today, the Stonewall riots began, when the New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn club in Greenwich Village and the LGBTQ members fought back, with six days of protests that lead to the gay liberation movement. To commemorate this pivotal point in LGBTQ history, and continue the celebration of Pride Month, here are some movies and TV shows available on IndieFlix and hoopla with your library card!
Angel Dumott Schunard is one of the kindest and yet most controversial characters in the popular award-winning musical RENT. Throughout the movie, Angel dresses in drag and sometimes identifies as “he” and at other times “she.” However she identifies, she is there for her friends as well as her lover. Angel isn’t alone in being an LGBTQ character in this musical. Maureen Johnson flirts with both guys and girls, making her girlfriend, Joanne, jealous. But RENT isn’t just about the relationships. It’s about coping with illness, the characters finding their voice or calling in life, and trying to make ends meet so they can pay their… you guessed it: rent!
Also on hoopla is a movie with many recognizable characters, including Christina Ricci, known for her role as Kat in Casper; Lisa Kudrow, recognizable as the eccentric Phoebe Buffay in Friends, and Johnny Galecki, who played Leonard Hofstadter in The Big Bang Theory. In The Opposite of Sex, Ricci portrays 16-year-old Dedee, who runs away from her mother to live with her half-brother, Bill, and intrude on his relationship with his boyfriend, Matt. Despite Dedee being the narrator, there are moments when it’s difficult to be on her side.
There are plenty of other LGBTQ movies to pick from in hoopla’s LGBTQIA+ Pride Month movie collection, including The Feels, about a girl couple celebrating their joint bachelorette party; My Summer Love, which has a deceptively cheery title for a psychological thriller; and The Wedding Banquet, a comedy about a Chinese yuppie in New York who tries to fake a marriage of convenience to hide his sexuality from his parents in Taiwan.
If you don’t have the time or patience to sit through a whole movie, or if you’re interested in creative films such as the ones shown at the Marblehead Festival of Arts Film Festival, go over to IndieFlix and try some of the short films and series there.
Consisting of two seasons of episodes only a few minutes long, The Coffee Shop Series is like a flash fiction series in visual format which you can easily binge in one night. Get a glimpse into everyday encounters Carol experiences in various coffee shops, where she meets girls and guys, sometimes running into them repeatedly, as fate would have it, all the while trying out various types of art, including sketching, writing, and making necklaces.
One road trip you wouldn’t want to be on is the one with Tristan and Zooey in the 15-minute film, The Thing. With both of them unable to hold their annoyances towards the other about taking the trip, they struggle to reconnect as they travel to “The Thing.”
For something a bit more odd, try Candy Cravings, about a woman who has an insatiable appetite.. for people! It must be difficult to be in a relationship when all you want to do is eat your girlfriend. Find out what happens by logging on to your RB Digital account!
It doesn’t end there! View the whole Indieflix LGBTQ collection for more short movies and series. You can also find out more about the history of the LGBTQ community in this selection of nonfiction titles, and peruse the reading lists of LGBTQ+ YA Books and YA Novels Featuring Trans and Nonbinary Characters.
Also, check out the Pride Month events held by some of our museum partners, including a musical and visual performance from singer-songwriter Anjimile and artist Jess T. Dugan at 2:00 pm today, Sunday, June 28th!
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