The 10 best films at Sydney WorldPride: from Madonna to Nan Goldin and a steamy cowboy movie
There is nothing quite like sitting silently in a dark room to purge the debaucheries of the previous night, which is why Sydney WorldPride has thoughtfully provided a film program amidst the oodles of parties happening over February and March.
There’s the Mardi Gras film festival, of course – back for its 30th edition – alongside a bonanza of transgressive, riotous and just plain stupid cinema, traversing both gay histories and queer futures.
Here are our top 10 picks.
Of An Age
When: 15 February
Where: Event Cinemas George Street
Director: Goran Stolevski
Related: Of an Age review – this Australian film is a modern queer classic
You might recognise Goran Stolevski from his debut feature You Won’t Be Alone – a witchy horror that earned him a frenzy of critical acclaim and made him one of Australia’s brightest new directors. He switches gears on his follow-up Of An Age: the will-they-won’t-they romance of two boys over one scorching day in 90s Melbourne, so full of white-knuckled tension as they veer ever closer into each other’s orbits that the audience at its Melbourne international film festival premiere audibly gasped when the film finally delivered on its premise. Watching it feels like re-living your first crush: giddy and maddening. The perfect opener for this year’s Mardi Gras film festival.
Swarm – a mini film festival
When: 23 February
Where: Skyline Drive In Blacktown
Directors: Various
Gays, famously, can’t drive – so the best thing you can do as an ally is to haul a carload of your queer friends to this mini film festival at the Blacktown drive-in. Curated by Sydney picture provocateurs Garden Reflexxx – known for their DIY screenings full of inflammatory, subversive cinema – Swarm is a celebration of radical Black film-making. Or as they call it: a “once-in-a-lifetime-immaculate-corpse-of-throat-grabbing-films screening”. On the lineup are works from Tracey Moffatt, western Sydney vogue collective House of Slé, and Leilah Weinraub – the American director who made headlines in 2018 for her documentary Shakedown and its infamous Pornhub premiere.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
When: 18 February
Where: Event Cinemas George Street
Director: Laura Poitras
Nan Goldin’s photographs have always been fascinated with life – queer life – in all its beauty and depravity, capturing the freaks and queens of her New York milieu with a steadfast, sometimes self-effacing devotion. This new documentary – up for an Oscar this year after sweeping awards around the world, including the top gong at Venice – turns the camera on Goldin’s life, and her recent experience with addiction after being prescribed OxyContin for a surgery. It follows the seminal artist’s activism against the pharmaceutical corporation behind America’s opioid crisis and its insidious connection to many of the country’s biggest art institutions. As in Goldin’s own work, the spectre of death looms large in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – but never overshadows the small triumphs of protest.
Joyland
When: 23 February
Where: Ritz Randwick
Director: Saim Sadiq
Joyland’s release has broken plenty of ground: the first Pakistani film to premiere at Cannes (where it won a jury prize), the first Pakistani entry shortlisted for the Oscars, and a taboo-breaking trans narrative in a conservative political context. But to read this film solely through its milestones is to ignore its nuances. Contrary to what the outrage in its home country might suggest – so fiery that the film was almost banned – Joyland doesn’t deal in grand polemics, but rather a twistier human story: a narrative about a family man working as a backup dancer for a transgender nightclub performer, to whom he becomes increasingly drawn.
The Winner Takes It All
When: 18 February
Where: Event Cinemas George Street
Director: James Demitri
For a palate cleanser, look no further than this proudly bad-taste caper starring Drag Race Down Under alumnus Maxi Shield. Described as “the funniest, stupidest ride of your life” and wearing its John Waters references on its extremely bedazzled sleeve, The Winner Takes It All sees Shield on a crass crusade of revenge after her best friend finds her husband cheating on her. In the mix: a reformed gigolo, a pornstar and one smoking gun.
Saving Face
When: 26 February
Where: UTS Alumni Green
Director: Alice Wu
Related: Saving Face: The Half of It director’s 2004 lesbian romcom debut was way ahead of its time
Hollywood loves to brand each new queer movie as the first of its kind – never mind the scores of films that had already done the same thing years ago, and better. Saving Face is one of these predecessors which became a cult classic: a genuinely groundbreaking lesbian romance from 2004 (!) about an artfully dishevelled doctor and a glamorous dancer who meet by chance – and, defying all cinematic expectations of sad gay couples battling the world, manage to wade through the marsh of familial intricacies and emerge unscathed.
Beautiful Thing
When: 26 February
Where: UTS Alumni Green
Director: Hettie MacDonald
This is the perfect coming-of-age for so many reasons: a main character bad at soccer (representation!), an almost-entirely-Mama Cass soundtrack, and an achingly gorgeous slow-dance sequence – maybe the best put to film – set on a London rooftop. Released in 1996, it’s a beloved entry into the queer canon about two high school students – a dweeb and a jock, of course – living in neighbouring council flats who fall in love via twitchy sleepovers and wide-eyed expeditions to gay bars. Make it a double bill with Saving Face, which is screening right before it.
Number 96 and Outrageous
When: 16 February
Where: Event Cinemas George Street
Director: Various
Related: Number 96 turns 50: the mayhem and mishaps behind Australia’s trailblazing soap
There must’ve been something in the water in the 70s which made studio execs greenlight – and continue greenlighting, for six whole years – a mad romp full of humping and dumping and just about every TV taboo under the sun, least of all the bounty of queer characters to grace 96 Lindsay Street. Five decades on, it remains a seminal (and outrageously camp) piece of Australian queer history. To celebrate, Mardi Gras film festival are hosting a screening of a Number 96 episode, followed by a documentary, Outrageous, about the queer history of Australian TV.
Lonesome
When: 23 February to 5 March
Where: Dendy Newtown
Director: Craig Boreham
Lonesome taps into the universal queer urge to wear a cowboy hat for no reason: its wounded protagonist is a country boy in full western cosplay who looks like he’s stepped straight out of a Tom of Finland illustration. He’s made it to the big smoke (Newtown), ready to purge the grief of his cloistered upbringing by embarking on a bacchanalian odyssey through strangers’ apartments and back alleys. It’s equal parts steamy and sobering – and, as the title suggests, an unsparing study of queer loneliness.
Desperately Seeking Susan
When: 20 February
Where: Hoyts Broadway
Director: Susan Seidelman
It somehow makes perfect sense that the WorldPride lineup includes a film festival dedicated to Madonna. Her first screen performance in Desperately Seeking Susan plays like an ode to her early club kid days: she appears as a stylish vamp with panache to spare. Hijinks ensue when another woman becomes obsessed with her – and then mistaken for her. Our Guardian retrospective notes that the film was almost never made because, “as the producer … said, ‘Only women and gay men liked it.’” Enough said.
