This column focuses on the dynamic or below-the-surface nature of queer representation in international cinema.

By Willow Catelyn Maclay | August 14, 2025

Much of the low-budget queer cinema of the 20th century has a documentary flavor; everything feels authentic and real even when fictionalized. In many of these films, a liberated, explicit representation of active queer spaces is still informed by the reality of the closet.

By Alexander Mooney | August 8, 2025

The notion that gay lifestyles are fundamentally lonely and perilous is, of course, absurd and antiquated, but this acutely provocative filmmaker meets such stereotypes head-on, exposing their roots, testing their limits, and probing their lasting impact on queer narratives past and present.

By Mackenzie Lukenbill | June 5, 2025

Madsen has images of different materialities play out in the same frame, collapsing temporality and distance. Photographs, both digital and magnetic video, and hand-processed 16mm film are used simultaneously, often overlaid and blended, using the grammar of optical printing techniques via a digital intermediate.

By Jawni Han | February 14, 2025

Revolutionary gestures in cinema have to be excavated from the rubble of film history, and an earnest engagement with this deeply flawed film unveils a reservoir of untapped revelations that can be harnessed in our contemporary queer imagination.