"It Gets Better"
Identity is an experimental short film about gender fluidity, memory, and transformation.
Social & External
Feminine
Masculine
As an AIDS activist and member of ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s, Sam witnessed the deaths of too many friends and lovers. Battlewounded and struggling with survivor's guilt, Sam now resents the complacency of his former comrades and derides what he sees as the younger generation's indifference to the politics of sex, and of death. An unexpected intimacy with a much younger man challenges Sam's understanding of contemporary gay life. Through this unconventional romance, he is forced to deal with the trauma that so informs his past, their present, and an unknown future.
On the outskirts of Brooklyn, Frankie, an aimless teenager, suffocates under the oppressive glare cast by his family and a toxic group of delinquent friends. Struggling with his own identity, Frankie begins to scour hookup sites for older men.
When a young Dutch tourist gets stranded at the start of his US vacation, he finds help from an unlikely stranger.
Henri and Thom live together in Brussels and have been in perfect love for 35 years, or so it seems. Since Henri retired as a policeman, nothing has gone right. His days are dull and endless, his feelings are fading and their home has become a battlefield. Still in love, Thom is ready to do anything to rekindle the flame and save their relationship, even if it means asking for a divorce himself.
The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.
Professor of language and philosophy Dominic Matei is struck by lightning and ages backwards from 70 to 40 in a week, attracting the world and the Nazis. While on the run, the professor meets a young woman who has her own experience with a lightning storm. Not only does Dominic find love again, but her new abilities hold the key to his research.
Seven-year-old Filip admires his older brother Sebastian most of all. They fool around, watch movies and play football together. One evening Filip happens to see something unexpected between Sebastian and his best friend and Filip doesn't know how to handle it.
Giò, a 13-year-old girl living in the south of Italy, is the head of a boys' gang. She's secretly in love with young Paola, and she's ready to compete with male opponents to win her heart. In the last day of summer, innocence ends.
Conservative middle-aged fisherman Singaram cares for his orphaned niece and nephew who he loves deeply. As Singaram works hard to provide for his family, he also tries to arrange a groom for his niece. But she rejects the many suitors he brings, and he soon learns that his niece is in love with her fellow female teacher. Ostracized by his community, Singaram tries to come to terms with his niece being a lesbian and through the process he learns to empathize with the plight of the village barber Alankaram, who is transgender.
Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.
Daniel is a young man struggling with an inner identity that is desperate to be realised. After leaving his father to move to London, his subconscious desires begin to take control. Led by his new co-worker and upon finding London's Drag hotspot 'Lost & Found' nightclub, Daniel realises his life will never have to be the same again.
We wish to make him ours, to keep and to hold forever - but will the boy reciprocate? And is he everything we expected him to be? In these five tales from the UK, France, Sweden, Mexico and the USA, a variety of characters throw caution to the wind and take their chances on a fleeting moment. The short films are: Uneven [Impar] (2016); Wolves (2016); Johnny (2018); Debut (2016); Guardian (2018).
It's 1968. Ian and John, two young point men in love in the midst of the Vietnam War, lead their squad in a desperate attempt to survive a botched Phoenix Mission, despite their Captain who has lost his humanity and who will use any means to win, including sacrificing the squad.
Julchen is the "feminine" (transvestite) and definitely motherly half of a couple of homosexual men, the "co-fathers" of a pleasant part-Moroccan girl. The girl has been told that her mother is dead, but Julchen knows this is not true.
In Sardinia, in the near future, the ancient settlements come back to life, once again hosting man. The young Mila is robbed of her father's inheritance by her paternal uncles. After many adventures she manages to obtain revenge. Despite this, the girl still struggles to find serenity and therefore decides to undertake a spiritual journey in search of herself.
A domineering but charismatic rancher wages a war of intimidation on his brother's new wife and her teen son, until long-hidden secrets come to light.
The love uncertainties of a young homosexual in search of himself.
Camille is a professor at a Protestant college and is in a long-term relationship with Martin, a respected minister and fellow professor. When Camille meets Petra, a bold and flamboyant performer in a circus troupe, she is inexplicably drawn. Pursuing Petra, Camille throws her whole conservative life into disarray.
A massive segment of the Sun has broken off and is heading for Earth, whose surface is slowly heating up to an unbearable level. A strange mood pervades a debilitated world: anything could happen, virtually anywhere, without warning. Even in a sleepy town, where an 18-year-old lad gets stranded on his way to the family cottage. The fact is that no-one knows at what temperature the human character starts to melt...
Mélanie Prouvost, a ten-year-old butcher's daughter, is a gifted pianist. That is why she and her parents decide that she sit for the Conservatory entrance exam. Although Mélanie is very likely to be admitted, she unfortunately gets distracted by the president of the jury's offhand attitude and she fails. Ten years later, Mélanie becomes her page turner, waiting patiently for her revenge.
This intimate drama follows Rebecca, a woman who has kept her sexuality a secret from her friends but chooses to reveal it to a stranger. While Rebecca's revelations may not yield the results she expects, a perfect ending is still in reach.
In the late 1990s, the arrival of elderly invalid Patrick into Marion and Tom’s home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previous: the passionate relationship between Tom and Patrick at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
A teenager transitions from female to male, and his family must come to terms with that fact.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
An English mother and her teenage son spend a week preparing the sale of their remote holiday house in the South of France. Fifteen-year-old Elliot struggles with his dawning sexuality and an increasing alienation from his mother, Beatrice. She in turn is confronted by the realisation that her marriage to his father, Philip, has grown loveless and the life she knows is coming to an end. When an enigmatic local teenager, Clément, quietly enters their lives, both mother and son are compelled to confront their desires and, finally, each other.
A tough, street-smart kid serving a sentence in a state youth reformatory meets a beautiful, innocent girl studying at a nearby convent. When forbidden love blossoms between them, they must fight the prison authorities, their parents and the law.
When her all-male house-cleaning business gets out of control, a mature woman must embrace her own sexuality, if she is to make a new life for herself.
A high school outcast pays a cheerleader to pose as his girlfriend so he can be considered cool.
An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.
In contemporary Los Angeles, two millennials navigating a social media–driven hookup culture begin a relationship that pushes both emotional and physical boundaries.
Vivien, an accomplished student with a passion for physics, and Roy, a troubled young man, are involved in an accident that forces them to reclaim their lives one minute at the time.
When a change of circumstances leaves Miriam unable to pay her college tuition, she makes a surprising decision: to start performing in adult films, using the pseudonym Belle Knox. Miriam lies to her family and her friends at school, keeping her double life a secret. But soon rumours spread and Miriam becomes the subject of vicious online attacks and unwanted attention. Miriam fights back: she talks to the media, saying her new line of work empowers her as a feminist. But her confident stand has unintended consequences. Miriam is shunned by her conservative family and her colleagues in the adult film world. One impulsive decision has quickly spiralled out of control - and Miriam's problems are just beginning.
A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
When her rather explicit copy is rejected, magazine journalist Kate is asked by her editor to come up with an article on loving relationships instead, and to do so by the end of the day. This gets Kate thinking back over her own various experiences, and to wondering if she is in much of a position to write on the subject.
An inside look into one night in the San Francisco underground rave scene.
High schooler Jane struggles with the self-discovery that she is a lesbian after developing an intense friendship with another girl. However, this is only the start of Jane's troubles when her unaccepting mother Janice also contends with the surprising revelation brought forth by her only daughter.
A dramatization, in modern theatrical style, of the life and thought of the Viennese-born, Cambridge-educated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose principal interest was the nature and limits of language. A series of sketches depict the unfolding of his life from boyhood, through the era of the first World War, to his eventual Cambridge professorship and association with Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes. The emphasis in these sketches is on the exposition of the ideas of Wittgenstein, a homosexual, and an intuitive, moody, proud, and perfectionistic thinker generally regarded as a genius.
Shirin is struggling to become an ideal Persian daughter, politically correct bisexual and hip young Brooklynite but fails miserably in her attempt at all identities.
Gertrude Lawrence rises to stage stardom at the cost of happiness.
Jodi, the tallest girl in her high school, has always felt uncomfortable in her own skin. But after years of slouching, being made fun of, and avoiding attention at all costs, Jodi finally decides to find the confidence to stand tall.
