12 Black LGBTQ+ Flicks to Stream this Pride Month
Be Who You Areeeee for Your Prideeeeee!
The start of June is the start of Pride Month: a month loudly celebrating all the wonderful and amazing things about the LGBTQ+ community. Whether you belong to the community or see yourself as an ally, it’s important to show your love and support all year round and not just 30 days out of the year. Because Pride is not just about celebration, it’s about survival. Pride is about acknowledging those who came before us, and how they helped shape the world we live in now. Pride is about carving out a future free of limitations and expectations, so everyone has the freedom to not only love who they want, but to live how they want. This Pride Month, The Likkle Global Film Archive would like to celebrate Black queerness in all its forms, by highlighting some of the LGBTQ+ films in our catalog.
And as Quinta Brunson once said, “People be gay.” Happy streaming <3
-Briana
1. The Watermelon Woman (1996) | USA
An aspiring black lesbian filmmaker researches an obscure 1940s black actress billed as the Watermelon Woman.
2. Bola de Nieve (2003) | Cuba
Documentary about Cuban pianist and singer Bola de Nieve, aka Ignácio Villa, black, gay, mystic, pro-revolution and, above all, musician, one of the Latin-American myths of the 20th Century.
3. The Wound (2017) | South Africa
Xolani joins the other men of his community on a journey to the mountains to initiate a group of teenagers into manhood. His entire existence starts to unravel when a defiant initiate from the city discovers his best-kept secret, a forbidden love.
4. Passing (2021) | USA
In 1920s New York City, "Passing" follows the unexpected reunion of two high school friends, a Black woman and her former childhood friend who's passing as white, whose renewed acquaintance ignites a mutual obsession that threatens both of their carefully constructed realities.
5. Paris is Burning (1990) | USA
This documentary focuses on drag queens and ballroom dancers living in New York City and their "house" culture, which provides a sense of community and support for the flamboyant and often socially shunned performers. Groups from each house compete in elaborate balls that take cues from the world of fashion. Also touching on issues of racism and poverty, the film features interviews with a number of renowned performers, including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija and Dorian Corey.
6. Femme (2023) | UK
Follows Jules, who is targeted in a horrific homophobic attack, destroying his life and career. Some time after that event he encounters Preston, one of his attackers, in a gay sauna. He wants revenge.
7. Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023) | USA
Throughout his life, Little Richard careened between religion, sex and rock 'n' roll. A treasure trove of archival material brings to life a revolutionary figure, one who reinvented popular music as the ultimate form of self-expression.
8. Yesterday’s Rain (2016) | Aruba
Monica is in love with her friend. And now she has finally found enough courage to tell her. Today will be her coming out day.
9. Rafiki (2018) | Kenya
"Good Kenyan girls become good Kenyan wives," but Kena and Ziki long for something more. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.
10. Children of God (2009) | Bahamas
In the Bahamas, a closeted art student meets and develops a relationship with a man, while a wife deals with an anti-gay politician-husband who's given her a sexually transmitted disease and refuses to explain how he contracted it.
11. Monsoon (2019) | Vietnam
Kit, a British man of Vietnamese heritage, returns to Saigon for the first time in over 30 years after leaving the country with his parents, when he was six years old, at the end of the Vietnam War. Along the way he falls for Lewis, an American whose father had fought in the war.
12. I Am Not Your Negro (2016) | USA
In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, "Remember This House." The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished.