Throughout the month of June, we have been sharing films and documentaries to raise awareness of injustices faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer communities. June is Pride Month, commemorating the Stonewall riots in New York city in 1969, a key event that triggered the modern LGBT liberation movement in the United States and beyond.
Please visit this page to learn about key dates towards LGBTQ+ equality.
Difficult Love presents a lively personal take on the challenges facing Black lesbians in South Africa today. It features the life, photographs, work, friends and associates of visual activist and renowned photographer, Zanele Muholi (who also narrates the film).
This colourful and challenging collection explores screen representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives over the past century.
A television series about New York City’s African American and Latino LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming ballroom culture scene in the 1980s and, in the second season, early 1990s.
Directed by Stephen Isaac-Wilson, Day Dream features artist and founder of club night Body Party Kareem Reid. Filmed on the first weekend of Spring, the short poetically explores issues of queer loneliness, male vulnerability, and platonic intimacy. Despite an improvement of the LGBT community’s rights and media representation over the years, queer people still disproportionately suffer from loneliness and social isolation.
Victoria Cruz investigates the mysterious 1992 death of black gay rights activist and Stonewall veteran, Marsha P. Johnson. Using archival interviews with Johnson, and new interviews with Johnson’s family, friends and fellow activists.
In this short film, the eponymous ‘attendant’ is a middle-aged black man who finds his homoerotic fantasies taking over the museum he supervises when a painting depicting scenes of slavery becomes a tableau vivant of sadomasochistic desire. With this work, Julien explores spatial temporalities in a museum context, commenting on queer history and racial boundaries.
Barbara Hammer is a pivotal figure in American experimental film and a pioneer of queer cinema — constructing revelations on gender, sexuality, community, and later illness and mortality. Working primarily with eight-millimetre, super 8 and 16-millimetre film, she produced nearly 70 films, ranging from experimental shorts to essay and full-length documentaries. As part of Company Gallery’s ‘In Company With’ series, a selection of films by Barbara Hammer are available for viewing online.
Disclosure is an eye-opening documentary film looking at transgender representation within film and media, featuring leading trans creatives and thinkers sharing perspectives and analysis about Hollywood’s impact on the trans community. Reframing familiar scenes and iconic characters in a new light, director Sam Feder invites viewers to confront unexamined assumptions, and shows how what once captured the American imagination now elicit new feelings. Disclosure provokes a startling revolution in how we see and understand trans people.
Before You Know It is a 2013 documentary directed by PJ Raval following the lives of three gay seniors as they navigate the adventures, challenges and surprises of life and love in their golden years.
Marina’s life is thrown into turmoil following the death of her partner. Mourning the loss of the man she loved, she finds herself under intense scrutiny from those with no regard for her privacy.
For the tenth iteration of Bonington Film Nights, we’re pleased to present four films by Annette Kennerley, Ian Giles, Stephen Isaac-Wilson and Charlotte Prodger to coincide with LGBT+ History Month.
Each of the artists explore queer space through film, focusing on differing geographies, from the club to landscapes, documenting the erasure and reclaiming of queer spaces. The artists utilise numerous techniques such as voice overs and verbatim theatre to explore both personal and collective subjectivity. Collectively the films explore queer desire, (in)visibility, relationships, resistance, collective action, and the body’s relationship to space and technology.
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After the Break (1998)
Annette Kennerley
13 minutes
Trojan Horse / Rainbow Flag (2019)
Ian Giles
25 minutes
Fleshback: Queer Raving in Manchester’s Twilight Zone (2018)
Stephen Isaac-Wilson
17 minutes
SaF05 (2019)
Charlotte Prodger
39 minutes
Ian Giles completed his MFA in 2012 at the Slade School of Fine Art. He was a LUX Associate Artist 2012/13. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Outhouse, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Studio Four, OUTPOST, Norwich; Trojan Horse / Rainbow Flag, presented by Gasworks at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, London (all 2019); After BUTT, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, New York; Video Club: Sex Talks, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; After BUTT, Chelsea Space, London (all 2018). Ian was an inaugural winner of the Shannon Michael Cane Award in 2018. He was a New Geographies commissioned artist 2018-20 and is currently a recipient of the Jerwood New Work Fund.
Annette Kennerley is a writer and filmmaker based in London. She was born in Cheshire and started making films in the 1980s. She was awarded a BA in Fine Art (Film & Video) at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London in 1991 and has worked mainly with Super 8 and 16mm film, experimenting with optical printing techniques and with the support of production awards from the Arts Council. Her work has exhibited at cinemas and film festivals nationally and internationally.
Annette’s films explore themes of childhood, motherhood, love, loss and sexuality. She draws on personal experiences in many of her films, though she has also made experimental documentaries with transgender people and directed a Transgender Film Festival at the LuxCinema for several years in the 1990s. She is also a writer and a teacher/mentor to young people.
Stephen Isaac-Wilson is a black queer London-based director who has directed films for Channel 4, i-D, Victoria Miro and the Tate, and worked with artists including Jorja Smith, Isaac Julien and Klein. Stephen grew up in southeast London, and in 2013 was accepted onto the BBC’s prestigious production trainee scheme, where he began his filmmaking career. In 2015/16, he worked across the Emmy award-nominated series about LGBT rights, Gaycation, presented by Elliot Page.
Last year he was commissioned to direct a portrait film for the Tate’s Queer British Art exhibit and also produced a 40-minute Mykki Blanco documentary about black queer alternative culture in Johannesburg. Stephen combines both his journalistic background with his visual art sensibilities, to tell beautifully emotive and thought-provoking stories.
His work has been screened at the ICA, Tate and the Barbican, as well as a film festivals including Outfest and Iris Prize.
Charlotte Prodger lives in Glasgow and is represented by Hollybush Gardens and Koppe Astner. Last year she represented Scotland at Venice Biennale and won the Turner prize in 2018. Solo shows include Subtotal, Sculpture Center, New York (2017); BRIDGIT, Hollybush Gardens, London (2016); Kunstverein Düsseldorf (2016); 8004-8019, Spike Island, Bristol (2015); Nephatiti, Glasgow International (2014); Markets with The Block, Chelsea Space, London (2014) and Percussion Biface 1-13, Studio Voltaire (2012), London. Group shows and screenings include Lichtspiele, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017); British Art Show 8 (2016); Weight of Data, Tate Britain, London (2015); The Secret Life, Murray Guy, New York (2015); An Interior that Remains an Exterior, Künstlerhaus Graz (2015); Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain, Tate Britain (2014), Holes in the Wall, Kunsthalle Freiburg (2013) and Frozen Lakes, Artists Space, New York (2013). Performances include Orange Helvetica Title Sequence, NY Book Art Fair, MOMA PS1 with Bookworks (2014).