"Get Into It...Queen"

This week we had the good fortune to be a Club Cumming (Alan Cumming's bar here in Manhattan) when Miss Natalie (formerly of Broadway's Kinky Boots) performed. She's an incredibly dynamic live performer, with a huge voice and screen-ready comic timing. I expect big things. After an amazing 80s medley, she performed this hilarious original which might well be our choice for 'Song of the Summer' or, at the very very very least, an essential song for everyone's Pride playlists. 

Get into it, queens!

[YouTube | Spotify | Apple Music]

Pride Month Doc Corner: 'Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts'

By Glenn Dunks

The Film Experience and Doc Corner are celebrating Pride Month with a focus on documentaries that tackle LGBTIQ themes. We had planned to cover the new HBO doc Wig about the return of Wigstock, but HBO wouldn't allow it so now Trixie Mattel is here being reviewed all by herself.

Brian Firkus aka Trixie Mattel needs no introduction to fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race, but a new documentary made by director Nicholas Zeig-Owens and the World of Wonder production house that produces the series seeks to do just that. Treading fairly similar ground to Drag Becomes Him about season five winner Jinkx Monsoon (fellow Drag Race contestants BenDeLaCreme appears in both being sage and wise), Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts follows a year in the life of the folk-singing drag queen with the face of a Dollywood beauty pageant.

Knowing precisely what fans will be watching a movie like Moving Parts for, Zeig-Owens begins with the mental breakdown of her UNHhhh and The Trixie and Katya Show co-star, Brian Joseph Cook aka Katya Zamolodchikova...

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Pride Month Doc Corner: Activists, Fighters and Organizers

By Glenn Dunks

Once again, The Film Experience and Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month with a focus on documentaries that tackle LGBTIQ themes.

This week I am looking at four films, each of which focus around the fight for equality and LGBTIQ history across America. My favourite of the group is Southern Pride, a continuation of director Malcolm Ingram’s first documentary Small Town Gay Bar. Where that film navigated the communities around the bars Rumors and Crossroads, Southern Pride delves into two different bars – Just Us Lounge in Biloxi and KlubXclusive in Hattiesburg – as they attempt to pride events on the state’s gulf coast, the first of their kind.

Just Us owner Lynn Koval is the force behind the primary event with even RuPaul’s Drag Race competitor Gia Gunn booked, while KlubX’s Shawn Perryon, the recipient of a racist jailing for pot, who seeks to build a home for the region’s black queer population and with her own Unapologetic Black Gay Pride event.

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Sunday Shorts: Seven Must-See Gay Films

by Nathaniel R

The Armoire (2009)

We thought it time to indulge in one of our least documented movie interests: short films. This new series might become anything or nothing but we love alliteration so Sundays it is. To kick things off let's discuss queer shorts for Pride Month. Short films don't tend to last the way features can, given that it's hard to be reminded of them, culturally, and they aren't "for sale" or advertised on streaming often in the way TV shows or movies are. Short films are no longer the primary calling cards they once were for up-and-coming directors given the prevalence of TV work and DIY webseries. Now, though, shorts are often direct sales pitches for features. Consider a recent popular movie like  Brazil's The Way He Looks (2014) which was first a short film named I Don't Want To Go Back Alone (2010). The American comedy Gayby (2012) and drama Pariah (2011) also started their lives as celebrated queer films of 12 and 20 minutes respectively before their feature expansions.

But the current in-flux state of the form aside, it's worth finding cinematic gems in whatever size or form they come in. See these famous and/or underseen gems, please. And we'd LOVE to hear recommendations of other short LGBT films that caught your eye in the comments.

7 GAY SHORTS WE'VE LOVED BEFORE
(in chronological order)

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Links: Madonna, Ghostbusters, James Bond, Emmy Campaigns, etc...

• EW six different cover stars for Entertainment Weekly's "50 Years of Gay Pride" issue: Wilson Cruz, Anderson Cooper, Melissa Etheridge, Janet Mock, Neil Patrick Harris, and Ruby Rose
• Coming Soon Sigourney Weaver confirms that the original cast will return for a Ghostbusters 3
• Travel + Leisure a movie theater in Switzerland has beds instead of seats now for movies. Want

More after the jump including Emmy campaigning, Madonna's "Dark Ballet" and Brad Pitt's honorable cease & desist...

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