Kanopy is a free on-demand streaming service with a rotating collection of media. New releases, cult classics, bingeworthy television shows, and informational clips can all be found on the site, and accessed FREE with your YPRL membership.
The Kanopy collection is so large that at times it can feel a little overwhelming. This Pride Month, we’ve put together a list of films in our Kanopy collection, which explore and celebrate the Queer experience from many different perspectives.
Queer media has long been made. Tales of lovers uniting can be traced to before 2500 BCE, filling the popular culture lexicon. Through the invention of the moving image, films have explored the LGBTQ+ experience over the last century. At first, this could only be achieved through subtext. Subtle jokes, gazes, and language signalling to the community who were in the know the truth between two characters. As social awareness began to shift and being Queer was no longer criminalised, these characters could be shown with greater range and honesty. In reflecting centuries of forced silence, many films began depicting these relationships through shock and despair. Stories were often moored by the necessity of this silence.
While the taboo nature of being Queer makes up a large part of its history, there is also great celebration to be found in this identity. Connection, honesty, and the ability to see the world through a different lens are just some themes the Queer directors in this list of films choose to explore. Some are still painful, stressful, and emotional, but these struggles explored come with real meaning, and often pockets of joy.
This is a short selection of Queer films to watch, with your YPRL Kanopy account.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Celine Sciamma
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is somehow both tender and sweeping. Beneath the weight of the invisible patriarchy, it is a sapphic love story exploring the short-lived romance between a French aristocrat and the artist sent to paint her portrait. If you’ve recently enjoyed Maggie Farrel’s Hamnet or Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Beautiful, this tender film is for you. If it connects, you can continue with director Celine Sciamma’s other works on Kanopy, which include Petit Maman and Girlhood.
Shiva Baby
Emma Seligman
Emma Seligman’s debut follows Danielle, as she attends a shiva.
This gathering quickly becomes a boiling pot as we’re exposed to Danielle’s sugar daddy, his wife, her own demanding parents, and ex-girlfriend. We bare witness to the many different versions of herself that Danielle inhabits, and how she attempts to reconcile these within the pressures of family dynamics and expectations.
If you’re still waiting on your copy of Yesteryear, let the gripping, funny, and wildly uncomfortable Shiva Baby keep you company.
Lesbian Space Princess
Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese
Bright, comedic, and just a little chaotic, this grassroots Australian animation is not one to miss. Lesbian Space Princess critiques the Queer dating culture from the inside out, as our protagonist, Princess Saira, must shirk her critical inner monologue and save her egotistical ex from the Straight White Men. It is simply a fun time, which can be a breath of fresh air amongst sapphic stories.
Neptune Frost
Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman
Neptune Frost is an afro-futurist epic. The science fiction anti-colonialist musical follows a group of escaped coltan miners who form a hacker collective, with the aim of taking over the regime exploiting the region’s natural resources, and people.
There’s a level of belief which usually must be suspended when watching a musical. The characters will break out into highly choreographed song and dance, and then return to their lives moments later, as if in a dreamscape.
Neptune Frost subverts this expectation. Every dance and song serve purpose, and is believable in this world. It is used to open souls, bring love back, commune with the dreamers, and mourn those who’ve died. A truly incredible feat.
The Queer collection is wide and strong on Kanopy, so some other quick selects are:
Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, based on the classic novel, the film holds you at a distance – until it doesn’t.
Levan Akin’s Crossing, which explores trans rights through a tender story.
The 1991 cult classic Vegas in Space by Phillip R Ford. It’s sci-fi drag, and thus, a camp must-watch.
If you’re still not satiated, simply type ‘LGBTQ+ Cinema’ into the Kanopy search bar, and you’ll find an enormous range of documentaries, short films, and feature films to keep you company through (and after) Pride.