On the 10th anniversary of the screen adaptation of And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts' acclaimed chronicle of the early days of the AIDS crisis, the Festival looks back at the tragedies and victories of this vital chapter in the history of the LGBTQ+ community.

Blue Gate Crossing is about teenage crushes. The tomboyish Meng Ke Rou is some­ times serious, but her schoolgirl silliness unleashes itself when she's with her close girl­ friend, Lin Yue Zhen. So far so good, but Meng Ke Rou has the hots for Zhang Shi Hao, the sexy boy on the swim team...

This dark and evocative thriller is set against a backdrop of Europe in transition, where the East meets the West and where poverty clashes with affluence. Daniel is a single gay man living in Madrid. He is a successful lawyer and consult­ ant who spends his hours outside of work with a group of close friends, cruising the streets of the city's gay quarter at night picking up men...

In 1972, twenty-six-year-old Jürgen Bartsch, a child-murderer marked by illness and incarcer­ated in the Eickelborn psychiatric hospital, pro­vided his recollections while being videorecord­ed. Between 1962 and 1966, the butcher's assistant abused, tortured, and killed four schoolboys in Germany's Ruhr district.

At 21, Léo is the eldest of four; Marcel, age 11, is youngest. With their relatively young par­ents, they've always been happy and close-knit. Each is fairly open and accepting of Léo's homo­sexuality, but after learning he has AIDS, the family is faced with a situation that will eventual­ly test all bonds.

A quartet of girls from a prep high school are recruited by a secret paramilitary academy to conduct cloak-and-dagger missions.

What better way to kick off the Festival than with Die, Mommie, Die! — Charles Busch's delightful parody/tribute to some of the films and film genres that we love best? Busch turned himself into a New York theater icon by writing and starring in gender-bending camp-fests like Lesbian Vampires of Sodom and Shanghai Moon, then went on to write the smash "straight" stage hit, The Allergist's Wife.

Exploring cultural stereotypes, coming out in repressive societies, and the tricky navigation of difference, Different Shades of Pink addresses notions of self within the context of loving cross-cultural relationships.

A terrific ensemble cast of indie veterans work in sync to maximize the impact of this highly moving film. Director Thom Fitzgerald is firmly at the helm, guiding an intricate, interwov­en patchwork of relationships, friendships, and family ties that unfolds with sharp insight and dramatic flair.

James Wentzy's in-your-face Fight Back, Fight AIDS is a compilation of footage documenting the first ACT UP meeting in 1987 on New York City’s Wall Street and continues to 2002.

Another chapter in director Todd Verow’s exploration of gay male sexuality, Fluff offers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in an all-male strip club.

Bruce, the main character in Love Forbidden (Défense d'aimer), probably would disagree with the familiar adage "'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Masterfully, Rodolphe Marconi writes, directs, and stars (as Bruce) in an exploration of obses­sion and sexual panic.

Using footage from a rare 1920s erotic film, filmmaker Jenni Olson taps Brooklyn Bloomberg to offer her cheeky, over-the-top Yiddish insight into the appetites of two sexually daring women!

Mourning is a uniquely private ritual, especially for the young who have little experience with death. Duncan Mudge is a rural-bound adoles­cent whose mother suddenly dies, leaving him and his father to run the farm. Left with a distant and grieving father and no one else to talk to, Duncan finds solace with a pet chicken, only to be labeled "the chicken boy" by the town's rowdy teenagers...

Étienne is a cute teenager at high school in his native Rouen, played by the very talented Jimmy Tavares in his film debut role. When he is given a video camera, his whole life changes as he becomes obsessed with recording every detail of his life and those around him...

Based on the true story of Michael Alig, a Club Kid party organizer whose life was sent spiraling down when he bragged on television about killing his drug dealer and roommate. Starring Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, Chloë Sevigny, Wilmer Valderrama, Diana Scarwid, Natasha Lyonne, Mia Kirshner, John Stamos, and Dylan McDermott.

Philadelphia was born in a phone call between director Jonathan Demme and myself while sharing our grief surrounding the AIDS epidemic. People we loved were dying. We had to do something.

What goes through the minds of a class of schoolboys during an English class? What if only a few of the schoolboys are really biological boys?

Coming in second on John Waters' top-ten list of the best 2002 films, he calls Porn Theatre a "...hilarious, entertaining, and authentic film." It's also a quasi-nostalgic love story with a now almost entirely defunct phenomenon-porn cin­emas where films are screened on celluloid.

In 1997, a man was convicted for having sex with an underage boy. Two months before his sixteenth birthday, the boy in question had responded to an advert the man had placed in the personals. Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Short.

Prey for Rock & Roll is the story of Jacki and her all-girl rock and roll band, Clam Dandy, who are trying to make it in the LA club scene of the late 1980s. After ten years of being ignored by record producers, Jacki and the band find hope in one producer who promises to see them play and consider them for a contract.

Based on filmmaker Tracy Flannigan's four-year obsession with the band, Rise Above takes viewers behind the scenes to meet San Francisco's "dyke punk group" Tribe 8.

Once again, the immediacy of digital video brings the previously unheard stories of non­-Western homosexuals from around the world to the forefront of our vision and perspective. A young student provides his point of view about the lives of gay men in the Maghreb region.

This Is the Salivation Army was a 'queer pagan punk' zine, produced by artist Scott Treleaven from 1996-1999. The film tracks the rise and demise of Treleaven's publication and the strange cult it spawned.