Twinks Cinema

Twinks Cinema
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Celebrity · Posted on May 15, 2018

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"What is a twink?" —straight people, yesterday.
*It was honestly called "bob apple," which sounds pretty gay to me!
Look, I’ve lived in Illinois and seen a lot of Lincolns in my time but this is maybe one of the most unusual? C. 1940 sexy New Deal Lincoln at the DC Office of Public Records https://t.co/3a1nmL8GYM
Now excuse me while I hang out in the comments watching all you gays argue about who is and who is NOT a twink.
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Written by Cath Clarke Written by Tom Huddleston Thursday 31 March 2022
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46. Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (2020)
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With the help of leading directors, actors, writers and activists, we count down the best LGBTQ+ films of all time
Queer cinema has come a long way. Inasmuch as gay lives and issues were ever allowed to be addressed on screen without devolving into gross stereotypes, for much of the past century, the perspective was limited to that of white, cisgendered men. Over the last few decades or so, though, the scope of LGBTQ+ experiences depicted on film has expanded greatly. So, too, have the opportunities for queer stories written by and for the queer communities. In 2022, we’ll see Billy Eichner’s Bros , the first romantic comedy penned by an openly gay man for a major studio, while the great Billy Porter will make his directorial debut with a story about a trans high school student.
Obviously, there are still many barriers left to breach, and much work to be done to achieve true equality in Hollywood. But the strides of the last half-century or so deserve to be celebrated. To that end, we enlisted some LGBTQ+ cultural pioneers, as well as Time Out writers to assist in assembling a list of the greatest gay films ever made – and the results show that queer life is far from a monolith.
Written by Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Tom Huddleston, Alim Kheraj, Guy Lodge, Ben Walters and Matthew Singer.
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Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine
Old-fashioned and melodramatic it may be, but playwright Lillian Hellman’s tale of decent lives destroyed by idle gossip still hits hard. MacLaine and Hepburn play the proprietors of a prestigious all-girls school who are forced to close when an especially psychotic little brat claims she saw them kissing. Hepburn was sold as the movie's star – she's the dainty, glamorous one with the macho boyfriend (James Garner). But it's MacLaine who stands out, as the determined bachelorette forced to face a few things she's been hiding from herself. The supporting performances are stunning, especially Miriam Hopkins as MacLaine's voracious aunt, and it's lovely (and, even in 2015, unusual) to see a movie so dominated by women, with Garner the only guy who gets more than a line or two. TH
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez
Pedro Almodóvar is one of the great directors of our time and Bad Education is perhaps his most personal film. In 1980s Madrid, young filmmaker Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez) is looking for a story for his next film. One day a man walks into his office, claiming to be Enrique’s old school friend and first love, Ignacio (Gael García Bernal). He brings with him a script, a revenge fantasy loosely based on their abuse by a priest at school. The story that follows is almost impossible to summarise, as Almodóvar takes us on a virtuoso spin from camp to noir. CC
Cast: Alexandra Dahlström, Rebecka Liljeberg, Erica Carlson
This is a heart-melting romantic classic from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. It’s the age-old story of an anxious suburban girl, awkward Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg), who falls for a confident firebrand, in the process learning how to love life and stand on her own two feet. The difference here is that the rebel in question, Elin (Alexandra Dahlström), is a girl in Agnes's high school who might not share her romantic feelings. A film that feels less like a two-dimensional experience and more like living someone else's life for 89 minutes, Show Me Love is one of the all-time great teen dramas, exploding with life, insight and warmth. TH
Cast: Adepero Oduye, Kim Wayans, Aasha Davis
Dee Rees's Brooklyn-set 2011 feature is the story of butch African-American lesbian teenager Alike (Adepero Oduye) as she tries to deal with feelings that increasingly put her at odds with her family (check out her mother's aghast response to things like Alike's preference for boys' underwear). The influence of religion in the family's life is also crucial – though that nice new girl at church doesn't exactly turn out to be the straight-and-narrow influence Mom had in mind. Expanded from a short film with the help of executive producer Spike Lee. BW
Trans representation in Hollywood has a chequered, complicated and problematic past. What director Sam Fender does brilliantly with this eye-opening documentary, which was executive produced by Laverne Cox, is to demonstrate the sometimes violent and traumatising real-life repercussions that poor representation has on the lives of trans people. One particularly pertinent moment comes when actor Jen Richards brilliantly explains the causal link between cisgender actors playing trans characters and the epidemic of violence against trans women. You can also see how trans representation has been warped over the decades in Hollywood, becoming more damaging as time has progressed. Yet there is a thread of cautious optimism here; a sense of urgency and a demand for change as much from Hollywood as from those watching at home.
Cast: Yolonda Ross, Davenia McFadden, Rain Phoenix
Prison has been a perennial setting for lesbian drama of one stripe or another, from 1960s exploitation pictures to Orange Is the New Black . Stranger Inside – directed for HBO in 2001 by Cheryl Dunye, but released to cinemas in the UK – stands out both for its consultation of actual prisoners, and for its rich evocation of aspects of African American identity seldom seen on screen. Treasure (Yolonda Lee) is a juvenile inmate who engineers a transfer to adult jail hoping to find her birth mother. Instead she finds herself navigating a daunting world of aggression, intimacy, religion, politics and an unforgiving pecking order. BW
Cast: André Christian, Dorian Corey, Paris Duprée
The same year Madonna lifted the concept of ‘voguing’ out of New York’s queer underground and took it to the top of the charts, film student Jennie Livingston brought a camera into that same world and allowed its stars to dance, sashay and, most crucially, speak for themselves. The performances are wild, expressive and still a joy to behold, even after 14 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race , which owes the film a great debt for paving the way toward the mainstreaming of drag culture. But it’s the conversations that truly make Paris Is Burning an LGBTQ landmark. At the time, simply allowing the gay community to tell their own stories, in their own words, was a radical act, and Livingston gave her subjects space to discuss the pleasure and pain of queer existence with unvarnished honesty. Debate and controversy still surround the film - some subjects accused Livingston of underpaying them for their participation, for one - but it remains a vital and uncommonly empathetic work.
The first X-rated film ever to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, John Schlesinger’s sad, soulful portrait of a male prostitute trying to get by on the unforgiving streets of New York City may not raise that many eyebrows today – but its view of masculine insecurity and male companionship hasn’t dated at all. Tall, lunkish Texan Joe Buck (Jon Voight, in his best ever role) comes to the city with dreams of becoming a gigolo to society ladies, but gets more attention in the lonelier corners of the gay community. The film never puts a pin on Joe’s own sexuality, but the gay undertow is clear in his gradually tender friendship with scuzzy street hustler Ratso Rizzo — immortally played by Dustin Hoffman. GL
Cast: Daniela Vega Francisco Reye,s
Sebastián Lelio's Chilean drama packs a powerful and universal message about the isolating nature of prejudice. Staggering newcomer Daniela Vega brings quiet determination and no little fury as a grieving transgender woman who is stripped of everything but her dignity by her dead lover's bigoted family. A worthy winner of Best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Oscars, it also features one of the greatest dream-logic dance sequences you'll ever clap eyes on.
Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel
It might be set in the 1770s, but this glorious, sea salt-flecked romance feels totally contemporary and relevant in its energy and in what it says about art and who’s making it, and how that affects how we view the world and each other. It’s also an intensely moving evocation of female love and friendship between an artist ( Noémie Merlant) and the seemingly aloof subject she’s been commissioned to paint ( Adèle Haenel). It’s bold and proud, without ever being coy or unnecessarily erotic. It exists in a world dominated by men but refreshingly, director Céline Sciamma strips them out of the film almost entirely, apart from during its bookends. It’s deeply romantic and also deeply thoughtful – an electric combination. DC
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger
The story, on the surface, doesn't hold any obvious LGBT significance: it's the simple fantasy of a country girl, Dorothy (Judy Garland), who encounters a magical land after she receives a bump on the head during a storm. So why has The Wizard of Oz become an LGBT classic, even giving us the term 'friends of Dorothy'? Cultural theorists have spent many hours debating the answer to that question, with some suggesting that it's simply a matter of camp and others digging deeper and equating the black-and-white conservatism of the film's Kansas scenes to repression and even homophobia, and the colour and energy of Oz to being out and proud. Whatever the reason, somehow it just makes sense. DC
Cast: John Bolger, Richard Ganoung, Steve Buscemi
Shot in 1984, Bill Sherwood's feature – the only film he completed before his death from an Aids-related illness aged just 37 – was one of the first films to deal directly with the disease. Set over just 24 hours, it's pegged to the relationship between Robert (John Bolger) and Michael (Richard Ganoung), though the latter's ailing ex Nick (an early lead role for Steve Buscemi) is also central. Although it burns with injustice, Parting Glances is far from po-faced, giving a vivid sense of the humour and partying vital to the spirit of defiance that marked the New York downtown scene of the day. BW
Director: Harry Dodge, Silas Howard
Cast: Silas Howard, Harry Dodge, Stanya Kahn
Harry Dodge and Silas Howard's 2001 debut feature caused quite a splash at the Sundance Film Festival, offering a window into kinds of experience that arguably remain marginalised even within queer life. Howard plays trans man Shy while Dodge is butch dyke Valentine. These ‘two freaky grifters’, both getting to grips with unresolved issues around their parentage, team up to launch a petty crime spree that offers each a lesson in the potential of collaboration. The result is a heady and distinctive mix of working-class truthfulness and magic realism, created with the help of early digital video technology. BW
Cast: Stephen Caffrey, Patrick Cassidy, Brian Cousins
By the end of the 1980s, mainstream Hollywood was just about ready to confront the Aids crisis, and leading the way was Norman René's 1989 Longtime Companion . Taking its name from the New York Times obituary page’s euphemism for the partners of the dead, it covers the whole decade, structured around well-heeled couple Sean (Mark Lamos) and David (Bruce Davison) and their friends and family (played by the likes of Campbell Scott, Dermot Mulroney and Mary-Louise Parker). For many without experience of the crisis, it opened a window onto the realities of Aids-related illness. BW
Cast: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adèle Haenel
An essential and moving film centred on the Paris faction of ACT UP, the international action and advocacy group formed at the height of the HIV/AIDs epidemic, in the early 1990s. The group publicly protested against the French government and the pharmaceutical companies for their slow responses to the pandemic.
To begin, we’re introduced to ACT UP via the thrillingly handsome newbie Nathan (Valois), who gradually becomes more politically involved with the group. In this febrile setting, an increasingly tender romance blossoms with sparky activist Sean (Pérez Biscayart). Campillo, himself an ACT UP militant in the early ‘90s, deftly makes the transition from political agency to personal urgency, painting an intimate, sometime erotic and often devastating picture of the group’s members as they celebrate, make love and mourn in the face of tragedy and societal inaction. AK
Cast: Don Brooks, Bobby Kendall, Charles Ludlam
Goings-on behind closed doors have always been part of the LGBT experience – including LGBT filmmaking. Throughout the 1960s, James Bidgood shot a series of no-budget luxurious fantasias on 8mm film in his New York apartment, featuring hot young thing Bobby Kendall in such guises as a sexy matador, a sexy belly dancer and a sexy slave boy. Strung together as the erotic imaginings of an idling gigolo, these gorgeously imaginative scenes were released anonymously in 1971 as Pink Narcissus . Their ability to quicken the pulse while retaining a kind of kitsch innocence made them an influence on French artists Pierre et Gilles, among others. BW
Cast: Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders, Janelle Monáe, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali
The lingering sense of lives left unfulfilled permeates Moonlight , even if the film, directed by Barry Jenkins, does end on a somewhat positive note. Set in a barely recognisable yet unsettlingly realistic Miami, the film’s portrayal of the three stages of main character Chiron’s life, from boyhood to adulthood, thrums with pain, tenderness and understanding. The complexities of his situation and his internal and external crisis of masculinity are sharply matched and cut down by moments of kindness, Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe both deliver heartfelt performances. The burgeoning – and conflicted – relationship between Chiron and Kevin is the sort of romance that, while filled with strife, is also overrun with possibility. There’s plenty of tough stuff in it, but you can’t help but walk away from this one feeling a bit warm and fuzzy. AK
Cast: Martin Potter, Hiram Keller, Max Born
‘I am examining ancient Rome as if this were a documentary about the customs and habits of the Martians.’ So said Federico Fellini of his decadent, surreal dream of a movie. It's loosely based on surviving fragments of the first-century satirical work of fiction by Petronius (who was employed by emperor Nero as his unofficial ‘elegantiae arbiter’ or ‘judge of elegance’). Set in imperial Rome, Fellini’s film is fragmentary like its source, playing out in a delirium. It opens as two friends, students Encolpio (Martin Potter) and Ascilto (Hiram Keller), quarrel over a beautiful young boy (Max Born). In the pursuit of pleasure, decadence piles upon decadence – never has the term Felliniesque been so appropriate. CC
Cast: Steven Waddington, Andrew Tiernan, Tilda Swinton
Derek Jarman's typically eccentric spin on Christopher Marlowe's 1593 play about the doomed fourteenth-century king (played by Steven Waddington) catapults the present into the past – not least by having protesters from the pressure group Outrage playing characters in the drama. In exploring Edward II's sexual relationship with the unpopular Piers Gaveston (Andrew Tiernan) – a rare example of a gay romance in the literature of the time – Jarman lashes out at establishment forces then and now. Jarman's interest is more modern than historical, but he forcefully and playfully makes his point about homophobia through the ages. DC
Cast: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce
A lot of LGBT films ask mainstream audiences for sympathy, understanding, even pity. That ain't John Waters's style. In his delirious realm of bad taste, it's the straights who deserve pity for their intolerably timid stifling conformity while the freaks live it up on their own grotesque terms. The apex of this sensibility is of course 1972's midnight movie par excellence, Pink Flamingos , in which outsized drag legend Divine defends her title of Filthiest Person Alive by any means necessary. Cue sex, drugs, murder, cannibalism, fame and – how could we forget – the shit-eating grin to end them all. BW
Cast: Terry O'Sullivan, Wilfrid Brambell
As the title suggests, this isn't a single film but a trio of in
Tied Guy
Lesbian Handjob
Big Boobs And Ass Tease

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