Announcements
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February 14, 2020The Curious Cinema of Agnès Varda
How does one write about Agnès Varda? How does one describe an artist whose work feels so inseparable from the medium of cinema, and who regularly reflected on her own work with fluency and insight that could hardly be matched by the most astute critic?......
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December 9, 2019Still Burning
By Caden Mark Gardner Paris is Burning was a years-in-the-making endeavor. It distilled a moment before Manhattan completely pivoted from a gritty Metropolis to an unrecognizable tourist destination built on corporations from McDonald’s to Disney. These rapid changes to what the city had to offer......
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December 9, 2019Don’t You Know Your Queen?
By Caden Mark Gardner Frank Simon has never been a household name nor cinema verite icon with documentary film. His most well-known works for a while were on a filmmaker with much more of a legacy than him; Simon covered notorious film director Roman Polanski......
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June 7, 2019
The Club Jewel Box Collection
Inspired by one of Miami’s earliest queer spaces, CLUB JEWEL BOX presented the intersection of cinema, performance, and poetry by mimicking the way that queer people cruises through spaces, embracing looks and longing glances over touch and conversation. Below is a collection of pieces written......
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December 14, 2018Wrong Men, Wrong Women, Wrong Time: Queer Characters in Hitchcock
By Caden Mark Gardner “I think it is significant that, despite the fact that I knew that I was gay myself, it never occurred to me for a moment that the characters in the film might be; it was, at the time, literally unthinkable.”- Robin......
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August 29, 2018Barbarella: All You Need is Love
by Willow Maclay Barbarella defies all logic. A softcore pornographic (for its time) feature starring Hollywood royalty (Jane Fonda) at the height of flower power before the idealism of that movement was crushed under the wheels of the hell’s angels at Altamont. It’s a movie......
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August 28, 2018Double-Cross-Dressing
by Caden Mark Gardner Victor/Victoria is a grand farce where the tensions of identity, fame, and power could easily have been twisted into something more dramatic in its 1930s Paris, France setting. But Blake Edwards instead has the confusion, anxieties, and subversive nature at the......
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August 9, 2018I Me Mein Herr: Cabaret, Queerness, and Gender
by Kyle Turner There is little difference between Helmet Berger’s sexually deviant, amoral political strategist Martin (Helmut Burger), dressed up as Marlene Dietrich in stockings and pencil thin eyebrows drawn on, in Luchino Visconti’s The Damned and Joel Grey’s implicitly sadistic harlequin Master of Ceremonies......
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June 25, 2018The Florida Science Project
by Willow Maclay Sidney Drew’s 1914 landmark silent gender bender comedy, A Florida Enchantment, is likely only canonized due to it being one of the first of its kind, but that, in and of itself, is nothing to minimize. Over one hundred years old, it......
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June 25, 2018Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!
by Kyle Turner As playful and slick, as smart and self-possessed as its subject, the genius of Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page is dolled consistently throughout the film, but first appears, albeit faux-coyly, in its first scene. Jostling the audience back to New York......
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June 18, 2018Who Is You, Chiron?
by Caden Mark Gardner “A child is born and he is given a name. Suddenly, he can see himself. He recognizes his position in the world. For many, this experience, like that of being born, is one of horror.”- Poison (1991) by Todd Haynes The recognition of......
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June 18, 2018Queerness in Some Like It Hot
by Ella Donald “I can never have children!” “We can adopt some.” “But you don’t understand, Osgood! I’m a man!” “Well, nobody’s perfect!” There was a fixture in my childhood, a figure ever-present on screen through the years I was learning to see the world......
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May 21, 2018SEAMEN / SEE MEN / SEMEN
by Caden Mark Gardner Kenneth Anger’s experimental films were a cocktail of pop and subversion. A child of Hollywood, he became a pioneer and forefather to the music video, queer cinema, and avant-garde cinema of the latter 20th century. Whether it was dealing with the......
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May 17, 2018Dreaming of You: Selena’s Queer Legacy
by Manuel Betancourt Selena Quintanilla is the ultimate border-crossing queen. Born in Lake Jackson, Texas to a Mexican-American family, she managed what seemed impossible: she made crossover hits out of songs that combined elements from both sides of the border. But Selena doesn’t just exist at......
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May 16, 2018Who Needs a Light Touch When Smothering Will Do: The Weaponized Stereotypes of Basic Instinct
by Derek Godin Here’s my favourite bit of trivia about Paul Verhoeven: for the longest time, his 1980 film Spetters was available in full on PornHub. This isn’t as weird as, say, Crash winning both the Cannes Special Jury Prize and an AVN Award in 1996, but......
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May 15, 2018The Doom Generation: A Heterosexual Movie
by Elizabeth Purchell If there’s anything immediately shocking about Gregg Araki’s 1995 film The Doom Generation, it’s not the sex, the mayhem, the whatever – it’s the way it’s billed: “A Heterosexual Movie.” That Araki, whose aggressively gay previous films brought a punk charge to......
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March 11, 2018Velvet in Furs: Velvet Goldmine
by Kyle Turner Alien. Otherworldly. Beyond the heavens. However you could describe David Bowie, all he had to say was, “I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.” For the artist occasionally known as Ziggy Stardust—preceding the artists like Madonna and Lady Gaga—Bowie was......
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January 11, 2018Flaming Classics Announces New Series “Sex. Violence. Whatever.” to Highlight 90s Queer Cinema
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 4th, 2018 Coming off the success of their 2017 run, Flaming Classics is back with a thrilling new series entitled Sex. Violence. Whatever. With a distinct focus on queer cinema of the 1990s, Flaming Classics will be showcasing four radically different......
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December 5, 2017PRESS RELEASE: Flaming Classics Awarded Knight Arts Challenge Grant to Celebrate Queerness and Cinema
For immediate release December 5th, 2017 Flaming Classics announced today that it has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as part of its 2017 Knight Arts Challenge. Knight Arts Challenge funds the best ideas for bringing South......
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August 23, 2017PRESS RELEASE: Flaming Classics Announces Back to School Series “Smoking in the Girls’ Room”
For immediate release August 23, 2017 The Bill Cosford Cinema is excited to continue the film series: Flaming Classics. As Summer comes to a close, it’s time to go back to school with Flaming Classics: Smoking in the Girls’ Room. The curated films include three......
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May 8, 2017PRESS RELEASE: Cosford Cinema Announces “Flaming Classics” Series Highlighting Queer Cinema
For immediate release May 08, 2017 The Bill Cosford Cinema is excited to announce the premiere of a new film series: Flaming Classics. The series, run by Juan Barquin and Trae DeLellis, pairs feature films with live work by local performance artists in hopes of......