Ten Fab Queer Media Recommendations to Consume this Pride Month
words BONNIE LISTON
In the landmark 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet, Harvey Fierstein says, “There are lots of needs for art and the greatest one is the mirror of our own lives and our own existence. And that hunger that I felt as a kid, looking for gay images, was to not be alone.”
He also says, “All the reading I was given to do in school was always heterosexual, every movie I saw was heterosexual, and I had to do this translation. I had to translate it to my life rather than seeing my life. Which is why when people say to me, ‘Your work is not really gay work, it’s universal.’ And I say, ‘Up yours. It’s gay. And that you can take it, and translate it to your own life is very nice, but at last I don’t have to do the translating. You do.’”
Art has a great power to be a mirror, comforting and connecting us to others like us, but equally important is its power as a door, showing us experiences and perspectives different from our own and perhaps teaching us they’re not so hard to relate to as we may assume.
This Pride Month, whether you’re longing to be seen or looking to see a new side to things, we’ve put together a small collection of queer media from films and television to must-watch documentaries.
OF AN AGE (2022)
The second feature film from indie Australian-Macedonian filmmaker Goran Stolevski, Of An Age, is a captivating evocation of first love set in the summer of 1999. Kol, a young Serbian immigrant and amateur ballroom dancer experiences an unexpected and intense 24-hour romance with his best friend and ballroom partner’s older brother Adam. Think Strictly Ballroom meets Call Me By Your Name meets Muriel’s Wedding meets Son of Sin. Now that’s a love affair!
Stream it on Youtube, Apple TV or Amazon Prime!
PRIDE (2014)
In this heartwarming, historical tale (based on real events), an unlikely coalition is formed between LGBTQIA+ activists in London and striking Welsh coal miners as they realise what truly unites them – hating Margaret Thatcher. With a cracker cast of beloved British character actors, the film poignantly touches on the importance of community, solidarity, connection and the power of a union.
READ MORE: Our Favourite Childhood Environmentally Minded Media
FIRE ISLAND (2022)
This fun and funny film is a brilliant modern re-imagining of Pride and Prejudice set during a week at the titular gay holiday hotspot. Writer and co-lead Joel Kim Booster brings Jane Austen’s incisive and insightful eye to examining class and race within the gay community. It’s a refreshing rom-com with depth to its diversity and an honest approach to depicting gay friendship, romance and joy. Plus they keep giving their Mr Darcy tiny ice cream cones which is very cute.
SHIVA BABY (2020)
Representation for the messy, disaster bisexuals, Emma Seligman’s dazzling debut is an intense, claustrophobic comedy of manners (bordering on horror of manners, if such a genre exists) wherein a young woman struggles to keep up with different versions of herself when she runs into her sugar daddy and her ex-girlfriend while at a shiva with her parents for a family friend whose name she doesn’t even know. Often hard to watch but always impossible to look away from.
Stream it on Binge or Foxtel Now!
FEEL GOOD (2020)
A semi-autobiographical British dramedy from Mae Martin, Feel Good follows fictional stand-up comedian uh… Mae Martin as they navigate a new relationship with their girlfriend – a repressed, middle-class English woman named George – while dealing with the challenges of their addictive behaviour and sobriety. Series two explores Mae’s non-binary identity with incredible intimacy as Mae (the real one) came out between seasons and worked through their own experiences by creating some top-notch TV.
READ MORE: How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful: Must-Watch Ocean Documentaries
IT’S A SIN (2021)
Russell T Davies deserves some kind of award for his significant contribution to making television gayer (Queer as Folk, Cucumber, Banana, Tofu, A Very English Scandal, Doctor Who – thank you for making Doctor Who gay) including It’s A Sin – a drama miniseries which focuses on a group of young gay men who move to London in 1981 as their lives are irrevocably changed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Joyful yet devastating, the show follows a decade of their lives as they determinedly live and love despite the threat hanging over their heads.
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (2022)
An adaptation of the 1992 classic that takes its rich queer subtext and turns it into gloriously explicit text, this show is about women; all kinds of women and all the kinds of relationships they can have with each other – friends, sisters, mothers, teammates, lovers… The passion project of Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson, it explores gender, sexuality and race in ‘good ol’ apple pie times’ America.
THE CELLULOID CLOSET (1995)
You thought we were going to name-drop it up top and then not recommend it? It’s a landmark documentary! Based on Vito Russo’s 1981 book of the same name, The Celluloid Closet highlights the historical contexts that LBGTQIA+ people have occupied in cinema history, and shows the evolution of the entertainment industry’s role in shaping perceptions of LBGTQIA+ figures (up to the 90s at least). Fascinating and wryly good-humoured, it’s a must-see for fans of queer film, which if you clicked on this listicle…
PARIS IS BURNING (1990)
Speaking of seminal classics, Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris is Burning is the definitive record of golden-age New York City ballroom culture – the foundation upon which Ru Paul’s drag empire, and accordingly many straight people’s understanding of homosexuality, is built. It is a rare and precious time capsule capturing the experiences of Black, Latine, queer and trans people being defiantly fabulous in the face of marginalisation, violence and the AIDS crisis, with thoughtful exploration of gender, sexuality, race and class, as well as dazzling drag performances, sizzling shade and vicious voguing.
MIRIAM MARGOLYES: ALMOST AUSTRALIAN (2020)
Celebrated star of stage and screen, self-described “78-year-old fat Jewish lesbian” and newly minted Australian citizen Miriam Margolyes hits the road on an epic 10,000 kilometre, two-month journey across the “lucky country” as she investigates what it means to be Australian. Less overtly about homosexuality than others on this list, however, Miriam is incapable of bringing less than the entire force of her personality and view to every topic which is what makes this such an incredibly entertaining watch.
Stream it on ABC iView or Netflix!
