LGBTQIA2S+ Films on Kanopy

Donna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, DESERT HEARTS, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, by a woman.

In this 1959-set film, adapted from a beloved novel by Jane Rule, straitlaced East Coast professor Vivian Bell arrives in Reno to file for divorce but winds up catching the eye of someone new, the free-spirited young Cay, touching off a slow seduction that unfolds against a breathtaking desert landscape.

Gregg Araki’s acclaimed Outlaw Couple romance has been totally revamped in THE LIVING END. This take-no-prisoners story of two HIV-positive lovers on the run in 90’s America is even more powerful and politically charged than ever.

Nominated for a Grand Jury Prize in Dramatic Narrative at the Sundance Film Festival.

The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship.

After a string of unsuccessful and awkward encounters with women, Ben goes “back on the dick.” Cicada follows Ben, a young bisexual man, as he comes out to the world and develops an intense relationship with Sam, a man of color struggling with deep wounds of his own. As the summer progresses and their intimacy grows, Ben’s past crawls to the surface.