WTW: Pride Month

10 films you should watch this Pride Month

Hey queers and hets, Happy Pride!

Here’s a list for you…

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
dir. Toshio Matsumoto

A daring Japanese New Wave cult classic. We follow Eddie, (played by Pîtâ,) a “gay boy”* who performs in the underground clubs of Tokyo in the late 1960s. Shot in a documentary style, we switch between Eddie’s mythical misadventures with her friends and suitors, to real life interviews with the “gay boys” cast in the film. Giving more context to what we see in the narrative portions of the film with real life experience and perspectives.

Funeral Parade of Roses is a lamppost of experimental filmmaking of that time. Notable that the film is more widely accessible in the USA compared to other films from this era of Japanese queer cinema. Utilizing many of the signatures elements commonly associated with French New Wave, Matsumoto incorporates interstitial title scenes, surrealist graphics, and a soundtrack that weaves between campy carnival music and ear shattering rock n’ roll. Crafting a haunting and deeply unsettling story, harkening back to Greek tragedy. All while intermingling a cinéma vérité documentary into the structure of the film. Fair warning, this is not a happy story, but arguably one of the most beautiful and stirring works captured on film.

Where to watch: Kanopy might have it in your area, but I would NEVER suggest googling “Where to Watch Funeral Parade of Roses” and go to the 3rd or 4th page of the search….

*The term “gay boy” is how they are self-identified in the film. The film predates our modern (western) definitions and distinctions of gay, transgender, drag and cross-dresser.

Orlando (1992)
dir. Sally Potter

A loose adaptation of a Virginia Woolf’s novel, “Orlando: a Biography”. The film stars Tilda Swinton as a gender-bending soldier and confident to Queen Elizabeth I, turned desirable aristocratic siren, turned 90s single mother. Orlando is 400 years old actually if you didn’t know.

This is ideal for anyone who loves a period piece. Stunning costumes, unique and progressive filmmaking, all while playing with our preconceived understanding of gender performance.

Where to Watch: Youtube (rent)

Rope (1948)
dir. Alfred Hitchcock

A first of its kind film, famous for its perceived continual one shot. Rope is an audacious melodrama about two “roommates” who, not only commit murder, but hide the body in plain sight while hosting a glamours dinner party. While they are not explicitly identified as a gay couple thanks to the Hays Code, the script had always intended that our leading men were shacking up together. With no discussion of potential love interests of the opposite sex, effeminate tendency, and references to only ONE bedroom- these are homos. (and maybe Jimmy Stewart is too?)

It’s a bit complicated. The film plays into a dangerous trope- homosexuality is perversion and inherently leads to evil acts, like murder. Even still, groundbreaking for the time and clear through Hitchcocks own words, not a condemnation of queer life, but an allegory of repression. They do bad things, not because they are queers, but repression facilitates a need for expression that often comes out in maladaptive behavior. There is also themes of man’s need for social superiority that plays a key role in their motives.

While we could make the case, that portrayal of homosexuality as evil is antithetical to queer liberation. From a historical lens, it’s without a doubt fascinating that this movie made it passed the censors. With it’s near lackadaisical signally of queerness, a film this overt in its subtext is paramount to the seeds of today’s queer cinema. It’s also very fun!

Where to watch: Youtube (Rent)

Paris Is Burning (1990)
dir. Jennie Livingston

Required viewing for everyone. A groundbreaking documentary chronically the New York City Ballroom scene of the late 1980s. It feels a bit of an obvious choice for this list. However, while a seminal film for it’s time, and it’s references reverberating through our lexicon today- it’s still criminally under-seen, especially by straight people. It’s under 90 mins- get to it.

Where to Watch: HBO Max, Youtube

Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
dir. William A. Wellman

A pre- Hays Code film following two friends, Eddie (Frankie Darro) and Tommy (Edwin Phillips), who come of age at the height of the Great Depression and set off on the rails in search for a better life. While not an overtly queer film; the subtext can’t be ignored. We know from the beginning that Eddie and Tommy have a friendship and vulnerability with one another they don’t have with anyone else, even their girlfriends (Tommy seems particular uninterested in canoodling with the girls in town.)

The film also includes early depictions of drag work- while played for laughs mostly. We see Eddie and Tommy dress as woman in an early scene in hopes to be let into a dance for free. We also meet a new traveling companion along the way. Sally (Dorthy Coonan), the original Tomboy. Sally, in an effort to keep herself safe on the road and to fit in with the boys, dons an all male wardrobe throughout the film.

While the films delves deep into themes or poverty, alienation and, violence, we are left hopeful by the end. In the classic 1930’s way, everything is tied in a neat bow by the end. And while we don’t end on a passionate kiss, there’s still something intimate and charged about a simple pat on the back.

Where to watch: HBO Max

The Watermelon Woman (1996)
dir. Cheryl Dunye

In her debut feature, writer and director Cheryl Dunye plays aspiring filmmaker/ video store associates. In an attempt to find a subject for her first film, Cheryl focuses on early films from the 30s and 40s that feature Black actresses. She finds most of these performances to be the “Mammy” role. Actresses in these roles are often uncredited. After watching a film titled Plantation Memories, she becomes enamored by an actress credited only as "The Watermelon Woman." She begins to research and make a documentary in which she attempts to uncover the identity of “The Watermelon Woman” and it inadvertently holds a mirror up to her life as a Black lesbian woman in the mid-90s.

Some really charming and funny. All while exploring intersections race and sexuality, interracial dating, and reckoning with history.

Where to watch: Youtube (rent)

“Please Baby Please” (2022)
dir. Amanda Kramer

Suze (Andrea Riseborough) and Arthur (Harry Melling) are a normal heteronormative couple living in the Lower Eastside of Manhattan in the 1950s. Nothing to see here… until they come across a gang of very very hot and sexually liberated greasers who are up to no good- what could possible go wrong. It’s dark, funny, zany. Great cameo from Demi Moore and Cole Escola. A movie I suggest to a lot of people, but never ever want to hear any discourse about.

Where to watch: Tubi

The trailer is pretty good:

Pillion (2025)
dir. Harry Lighton

The second Harry Melling film on the list. Melling plays Colin, a timid young man living with his family in London when he meets Ray (Alexander Skarsgård,) an alluring stoic biker. The two begin a BDSM, Dom/Sub relationship. Despite the kinky and provocative nature of their relationship, Pillion is a tender and romantic exploration of desire, fear, and understanding of why we do the things we do.

It’s hot, smutty but also funny and charming.

Where to watch: HBO Max

Happy Together (1997)
dir. Wong Kar-wai

Devastating, poignant, and simply beautiful. Wong Kar-wai’s ability to capture pure melancholy in a visually complex feast for the eyes is unmatched.

Tony Leung <3

Where to watch: Youtube (rent)

Cruising (1980)
dir. William Friedkin

A killer is loose in the Meatpacking District, and targeting handsome young men in leather gear. Whatever will we do? Well, Al Pachino should go undercover in the underground BDSM scene because he kinda looks like a queer.

Lambasted at the time by both anti-gay religious groups, and the norm-core gay establishment, Cruising is a messy, surreal, and at times, irresponsible look into a subset of queer life in grungy, late 70’s New York. The script is kind of a mess, and you really start to wonder about Pacino. That said, it’s shot beautifully, and is a real artifact of the time. Filming in real gay bars and using the patrons as extras, theres an immersive quality that was rare for 1980. Friedkin’s original cut included what he refers to as “30 minutes of explicit hardcore gay pornography.”

Highlights of this film include; Bruno Kirby fisting a guy in a full bar, Pacino huffing poppers while dancing like a lunatic with other men, and the craziest thing you will ever see in a police interrogation room.

Where to watch: Youtube (rent)

Thanks for reading! Drop you Pride Month recs in the comments

xx