From “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” to “Gay USA,” seven movies that will fill your screen with joy, history and rainbows.
Pride Month is here, which means queer people and their allies will be taking to the streets for parades and protests and parades that look a lot like protests. There are dance parties, cultural events and unexpected gay histories to have fun with too.
But while boozy drag brunches and silent discos under the stars are fun and all, Pride can also happen onscreen and from the comfort of your couch. Tearful romances, family-friendly comedies, revelatory documentaries: Pride Month is a ripe time for discovering how the movies mirror queer lives as they were and still can be.
In these seven films, Pride comes out in all its messy, sexy, lovely glory.
‘The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson’ (2017)
Stream it on Netflix.
Murder or suicide? That’s the heartbreaking question that fuels David France’s documentary about Marsha P. Johnson, the trailblazing transgender activist, performer and high-profile elder of the Stonewall uprising who was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992. Yet embedded among the investigative elements of the film is a treasure trove of archival footage of Johnson, described in a 2018 obituary in The New York Times as “a fixture of street life in Greenwich Village.” To watch Johnson resiliently parade down Christopher Street during Pride, her beaming smile accentuated by her signature glossy lip, is to see a revolution in heels.
‘Gay USA’ (1977)
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
