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Lincoln Center Explores Pre-Stonewall LGBT Movies

Gay movies before 1969
Pictured: 'Tea and Sympathy' by Vincente Minnelli

Before that fateful night in 1969, these were the films representing our community, and New York’s Film Society has assembled them in one place.

If there's one thing we queer viewers have incessantly sought from the movies, it's a lessening of tragic and pitiful protagonists, whose stories, however vital, aren't specifically tied to the breakout of HIV/AIDS, or the Stonewall riots that raged on Christopher Street in 1969.

Whether explicit or beautifully nuanced, there are so many intimate cinematic stories that came before--and that, thankfully, have been culled together by the folks at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center. Their new series, dubbed "An Early Clue to the New Direction: Queer Cinema Before Stonewall," claims to be the most comprehensive of its kind, and, this spring, it unveils its riches from April 22 through May 1.

"It's my hope," says programmer at large Thomas Beard, "that by defining queer cinema elastically, surprising correspondences will emerge between worlds of moviemaking which are usually understood in contradistinction: studio productions and the underground, the grindhouse and the arthouse."

Highlights from the program include vintage gems such as Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour and Jean Cocteau Blood of a Poet, which will both be shown during the opening night, as well as Alfred Hitchock's Rope, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Love Meetings, and Vincente Minnelli's Tea and Sympathy.

Watch the series trailer, below:

See the full schedule at FilmLinc.org

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