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New This Week: The Revival

A desperate young man wanders into town looking for food and shelter. A progressive pastor tries to open the minds of his Old Testament congregation. A born again, recovering alcoholic fights for his church. A pastor’s wife looks to her gay husband for salvation. All of this comes to a scorching climax and an old-time revival that the film’s small-town won’t soon forget.

An exceptional feature-length debut from director Jennifer Gerber and screenwriter Samuel Brett Williams, The Revival explores faith in the Deep South in a drama that asks how far you’re willing to go for the things you believe in.

Eli (David Rysdahl) is a young preacher who has recently returned to his small, Arkansas hometown with his pregnant wife (Lucy Faust). Harvard-educated, Eli is more progressive than your average Southern Baptist preacher, and he’s looking to incorporate some of his forward-thinking into the sermons at his deceased father’s struggling church. Of course, that news does not go down easy with most of his parishioners, who still cling to the “fire and brimstone” portions of the bible.

Things get even more complicated when Daniel (Keep the Lights On star Zachary Booth) shows up at a church potluck. An alluring, mysterious drifter passing through town, Daniel brings out the savior (and a few other things) in Eli. Offering his new acquaintance shelter in a secluded cabin, Eli finds himself more and more drawn to Daniel. The two are soon deep in the throes of a secret affair, and their blossoming romance begins to threaten everything that Eli has worked so hard to establish.

Originating as an off-Broadway stage play by Williams, who adapted his own work for the film, The Revival is edgy, erotic and powerful. “We aim to challenge audiences to deeper understand issues of repression and hate,” said director Jennifer Gerber. “It’s vital to me that my films tackle real stories from the south. In my opinion, The Revival is a story that needs to be told. Given the current political climate we are in, I want to delve into the psychology of a community of people that make up much of our country but very little of our popular culture.”

The Revival is available on Dekkoo now. Check out the trailer below.

A teacher is wrongfully accused in ‘The Green’

An emotional gay drama, The Green is an honest, hard-hitting film about a well-meaning teacher in trouble. Early on in the film, a confident gay high school student makes the observation that “people always look for the easiest scapegoat when their sense of entitlement is threatened.” That line of dialog sets the movie in motion.

Jason Butler Harner stars Michael, an openly gay, happily-partnered teacher who has taken a special interest in a troubled, artistically-inclined student named Jason (Chris Bert).

It is alluded to that Jason’s family life is not very stable. His mother and stepfather (Karen Young and Bill Sage) don’t seem like the most nurturing or attentive parents. Despite warnings from his best friend and co-worker (Illeana Douglas, charming as always) about getting too involved in the lives of students, Michael presses on. He sees potential in Jason and cares about his well-being.

Unfortunately for all parties involved, a heated public argument ensues during a school art show. Jason’s parents soon begin to suspect that Michael’s interest in their son may have lurid undertones.

It doesn’t take long before Michael becomes the town pariah, accused of carrying on a predatory relationship with his student. Adding insult to injury, his relationship with Daniel (Cheyenne Jackson), his loving partner of 15 years, is thrown into jeopardy when authorities start investigating the pair as partners in sordid crime.

The pair’s only major ally comes in the form of Karen (Julia Ormond), a tough-as-nails attorney who believes in Michael’s innocence (and also happens to be gay). Karen is ready for a dirty fight – planning to expose Jason’s parents as ethically-bankrupt opportunists. But, Michael’s refusal to cause harm to this already struggling family might prevent him from clearing his name.

A provocative drama with a stellar cast, The Green is playing now on Dekkoo. Check out the trailer below.

‘Come Undone’ is Coming Soon

“It captures the uncertainty and emotional turbulence of late adolescence with poignancy. Shimmeringly beautiful and utterly real.” – The New York Times

“Brings maximum subtlety, nuance and insight into the timeless story of first love.” – Los Angeles Times

“The most mature depiction of a young gay male’s romantic awakening I have ever seen.” – The Advocate

All of the gorgeous bronzed bodies on the beaches of southern France, plus the passionate romance between the lead teens, are reason enough to see Come Undone, but this bittersweet gay classic also has something poignant to say about the heartbreak of first love.

Eighteen-year-old Mathieu (Jérémie Elkaïm) is vacationing at the beach with his family when he meets local teen Cedric (Stéphane Rideau). After an extremely erotic kiss, the boys begin a hot and heavy affair, complete with skinny-dipping at night, nude dancing on the beach and intense lovemaking in the dunes. Yet as Mathieu grapples with his sexuality – and copes with his sick mother, absent father and annoying kid sister – his bond with Cedric grows stronger… until it bursts.

Come Undone, directed and co-written by Sebastien Lifshitz, beautifully conveys Mathieu’s coming-of-age – a scene in which he comes out to his mother is quite moving. Both Stéphane Rideau and Jérémie Elkaïm are incredibly sexy leads and give remarkable performances as the affectionate young lovers.

Check out the original trailer for Come Undone below and make sure to watch it on Dekkoo when it debuts July 17! While you’re waiting, you can check out a huge selection of other coming-of-age flicks here.

Let’s play Truth or Dare

Truth or Dare is coming to Dekkoo starting July 12!

An up close and personal documentary chronicling Madonna’s unforgettable 1990 “Blond Ambition Tour,” Truth or Dare has become legendary, taking us backstage and under the covers with the music and pop culture icon. This film showed the Queen of Pop as never before – as not only a singer, dancer, sex goddess and savvy businesswoman, but as a den mother to her backup dancers.

Madonna’s dancers were almost all gay, and showed their sexual identity in the tour film (greatly encouraged by Madonna’s desire for them to ‘express themselves’).

Madonna with her backup dancers from the Blonde Ambition Tour — Madonna with her backup dancers

At the height of the AIDS epidemic and in the aftermath of the conservative Reagan era, Truth or Dare introduced audiences to fun-loving, bold and larger-than-life gay characters. The film was ground-breaking, featuring two guys kissing passionately and everyone else talking openly.

Madonna, determined to push the envelope, defended the film ferociously: “If you keep putting something in people’s faces, eventually, maybe they can come to terms with it.” The message stuck: even today, the dancers receive thank-you letters from people around the world recalling how the film changed their lives. Their openness turned out to be an inspiration to many.

This is the original movie poster for Madonna: Truth or Dare — The original poster for Madonna: Truth or Dare

Truth or Dare makes its Dekkoo debut on July 12. Whether you’ve seen it before or not, make sure to check it out and cherish the magic.

Pride Month Spotlight: Vito

“Enormously entertaining… Incisive and illuminating. This emotionally powerful documentary…is the stirring testament he deserves.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Hugely moving and even more inspiring.” – LA Weekly

“I highly recommend it to anyone interested in pop culture, in civil rights, or in how the two are deeply connected. Through his story, ‘Vito’ becomes not just a biography but a history of his times, as a fight against discrimination became a fight for life.” – Time Magazine

“Involving… vibrant. A dramatic focal point in the history of gay rights.” – Variety

On June 27, 1969, a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar took a surprising turn when patrons decided it was time to fight back. As a riot erupted outside the Stonewall Inn, a new era in the Gay Rights Movement was born. You know the story.

Vito Russo, a 23-year-old film student, was among those in the crowd the unforgettable night. Over the next twenty years, until his death from AIDS in 1990, Vito would go on to become one of the most outspoken and inspiring activists in the LGBT community’s fight for equal rights.

In the midst of his involvement with Act Up and the fight against AIDS, Vito was also a prolific writer. His seminal book The Celluloid Closet explored the ways in which gay and lesbian characters were (most often subtly) portrayed on film, what lessons those characters taught gay and straight audiences, and how those negative images were at the root of society’s homophobia.

Even before the book was published, Vito was taking The Celluloid Closet on the road, traveling to gay film festivals and college campuses for an entertaining and informative lecture/ clip show that intertwined Vito’s love of show business and radical gay politics. He continued writing, lecturing, speaking out and acting up until just months before his death.

Directed by award-winner Jeffrey Schwarz (I Am Divine, Tab Hunter Confidential, The Fabulous Allen Carr), Vito paints a galvanizing portrait of this outspoken activist in the LGBT community’s struggle for equal rights, using period footage and film clips to capture a vibrant era of gay culture. It’s simply a must-see.

Vito is streaming right now on Dekkoo as one of our Pride Picks. Make sure you check it out if you haven’t seen it already!

Pride Month Spotlight: Raid of the Rainbow Lounge

On June 28, 2009, at 1:28 am, seven police officers and two agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission swarmed into the Rainbow Lounge, a newly opened gay bar in Fort Worth. The raid lasted approximately 30 minutes. It occurred 40 years, to the date, after the Stonewall riots in New York City – and the parallels are haunting.

Five patrons were zip tied, arrested for public intoxication and taken to jail. Multiple others were arrested and/or detained and then later released. One patron, Chad Gibson, was taken to the emergency room with life threatening injuries and was charges with assault and public intoxication. Police claimed the whole incident was simply a routine inspection.

Writer-director Robert L. Camina knew he needed to capture what was going on. His film, Raid of the Rainbow Lounge, recounts the events of that night, their aftermath and the massive changes that followed. Attending almost every single event related to the raid, camera in hand, Camina was able to interview over 35 people and record over 50 hours of rallies, city council meetings, counter-protests and more.

In the wake of the raid, Fort Worth city leaders and members of the LGBTQ community took significant steps to create a better world for all its citizens. Fort Worth is now a leader in LGBTQ equality.

“I hope this film inspires people to get involved in their own community,” said Camina in his original Director’s Statement. “While city leaders need to be held accountable for the safety and well-being for all the people they represent, members of the community also need to speak up and initiate change.”

Raid of the Rainbow Lounge embodies the ideals set out by many grassroots organizations seeking progressive change. It’s also a textbook example of how a powerful piece of cinema can be a tool for that change. Raid premiered in Fort Worth in 2012 to a sold-out crowd, rave reviews and a media frenzy. The screening proved to be a watershed moment. It provided closure, healing and strengthening the bridges built between the Fort Worth Police Department and the local LGBTQ Community. It went on to screen at more than 30 film festivals all across North America and picked up some major awards and extra positive attention along the way.

You can stream Raid of the Rainbow Lounge right now on Dekkoo as one of our Pride Picks!

Pride Month Spotlight: The Apple Tree

When Gabe and Jonathan (played as young men by Jay Renshaw and Ryland Shelton) fall in love in the 1940s, they decide to spend their life together in secret. But as the times changed, so died the couple – who were eventually able to express their love openly.

When Jonathan unexpectedly passes away years later, Gabe (played as an older man Jerry Bornstein) is faced with a dilemma that many LGBT elders encounter when they move into retirement homes… going back into the closet.

A 30-minute short film, writer-director Matthew Ladensack’s The Apple Tree screened world-wide at LGBT film festivals, and ended up winning the Best Picture prize at Out in the Desert. The short was very powerful at the time it was released and over the intervening years, with many baby boomers entering assisted living homes, the story the film tells has become much louder and stronger – so much so that Ladensack is in the process of adapting it into a feature film.

The writer/director’s newest draft earned a spot in the Top 50 of the world famous Tracking Board Launch Pad feature screenplay contest and was a semi-finalist at the Nashville Film Festival Feature Screenplay Contest. The feature will focus not only on aging in the gay community, but on two generations of gay men coming together – a new primary character, Colton, is a closeted high school football player who ends up forming a close bond with Gabe and seeing, first hand, the experiences of his LGBTQ fore-bearers.

Make sure you check out the original short film before the full-length feature arrives. The Apple Tree is currently streaming on Dekkoo. It’s one of our Pride Month picks.

Pride Month Spotlight: Were the World Mine

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

It doesn’t get better than this swoon-worthy, candy-colored musical about a high school boy who uses magic to turn many of the boys at school gay – just in time for a show-stopping production of a Shakespearean classic. Since its release, Were the World Mine has become a gay musical classic that we will return to again and again.

Timothy (Tanner Cohen) is a gay boy stranded in a private all-boys school, which is largely obsessed with rugby. Unfortunately, there’s only one thing about rugby that catches Timothy’s interest: he’s obsessed with the super-adorable star player Jonathan (Nathaniel David Becker).

Both boys are students in Ms. Tebbit’s English class (she’s played by the delightful Wendy Robie of “Twin Peaks” and The People Under the Stairs). She’s a teacher with a mission: to excite her students with the literature of the ages. When she decides to cast these two boys as the romantic leads in her production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (and to cast boys in all of the female roles), she proves herself just as mischievous as Puck.

The rugby Coach and townspeople are up in arms, but for Timothy, it seems like his wildest romantic fantasies may be coming true. He finds, in the script, the recipe for a potion to make people gay. With just a few spritzes from his magic pansy, the entire town (filled with Christian fundamentalists) is soon whipped into frenzy as the glorious production night approaches.

This deliciously surreal confection from co-writer/director Thomas Gustafson, based on his own 2003 short film Fairies, is a true gem. The musical numbers are over-the-top, production values first-rate and the acting is as flawless as the adorable boys on display. Even the top critics agreed back in 2008 when the film first screened. After Elton called it “absolutely breathtaking” and The New York Times said it was “movie musical magic.” It also managed to snag over twenty audience and jury awards during its initial film festival run.

Swoon all over Were the World Mine RIGHT NOW on Dekkoo! It’s one of our treasured Pride Picks.

Pride Month Spotlight: This is What Love in Action Looks Like

Though he’s know primarily for films like Blue Citrus Hearts and his Dekkoo Original Series Feral, writer-director Morgan Jon Fox set out to make a difference with his 2011 documentary This is What Love in Action Looks Like.

When 16-year-old Zach Stark told his parents that he was gay, they panicked, believing that something was psychologically wrong with him. They soon sent him to “Love In Action,” a religious organization that promised to “cure” homosexuality.

Founded in 1973, Love in Action, now known as “Restoration Path” is the oldest and largest ex-gay organizations in the United States. They take the position that homosexuality is strictly behavioral and can be cured. Originally for adults, they began a program for teens, many of whom sent involuntarily.

Their draconian methods for sexual “redemption” prompted Fox, already a well-established indie filmmaker, to both become active in the ensuing protest against the group as well as document it all through interviews with several youths who had been in the program, the then current director of “Love in Action” (himself, a “former gay”) and the many young protesters who were compelled to mobilize against the organization.

An important look at gay youth, intolerance and skewed religious beliefs, This is What Love in Action Looks Like is available on Dekkoo. It’s one of our heralded Pride Picks.

Pride Month Spotlight: Scrum

“Cinematic and deeply poetic, Scrum smashes stereotypes.” – Screen Australia

“It’s not about gay, it’s not about rugby, it’s about an unstoppable team… who happen to be gay.” – Salty Popcorn

“From sweaty locker rooms to the pub, from nerve-wracking draft meetings to slow-motion clashes in the dirt and rain, Scrum is a handsomely shot and deeply affecting film.” – The Low Down Under

From director Poppy Stockwell, Scrum presents an intimate look at the journey of three different athletes and members of the “Sydney Convicts,” an Australian gay rugby team, as they prepare physically, emotionally and mentally for the 2014 Bingham Cup.

As the players compete for a coveted spot in the Gay Rugby World Cup, this muddy, sweaty and visually arresting documentary shines a spotlight on some incredibly tough men who break every stereotype in the book. Not only are they deliciously rugged, but they have a hell of a lot of heart. Being a member of the Sydney Convicts is a major commitment. They’re not just teammates, they’re brothers.

Originally completed in 2015, Scrum has been broadcast on multiple continents and screened at numerous LGBTQ film festivals all over the world, to great reviews from critics and audiences.

You can watch Scrum now on Dekkoo as one of our Pride Month selections. Just be ready to break a sweat!