Award Winner – Page 27 – Discover great gay stories.

New This Week – 10/26/18

Derek Jarman delivers a retelling of the life of the celebrated 17th-century painter through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld. Watch ‘Caravaggio’ now on Dekkoo!

James, a sexy, youthful sought-after instagram star in high-society and self-proclaimed ‘Trophy,’ is dumped by his wealthy live-in benefactor. Now he must learn that the real world is not the facade he’s built for himself on social media. Stream the award-winning short film ‘Trophy Boy’ on Dekkoo!

As 19-year-old Bennett Wallace navigates early sobriety, late adolescence, and the evolution of his gender identity, his mother makes her own transformation from resistance to acceptance of her trans son. ‘Real Boy’ is available to stream now on Dekkoo!

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Coming next week: A wicked ensemble comedy about a group of gay, lesbian and hetero friends and family connected by secrets and lies.

The award-winning short film ‘Trophy Boy’ arrives on Dekkoo!

The award-winning short film Trophy Boy is now available on Dekkoo. The short film about James, a sexy NYC #bestlife poser who must face the harsh reality of creating a life without a hashtag after he is dumped by his wealthy benefactor.

The film was directed by actor and director Emrhys Cooper, written by co-star Anthony Johnston (a writer on the CBS series “Instinct”) and co-stars Gerald McCullough, who many know from the “Bear City” movies.

Trophy Boy, premiered on Sunday October 21st in the private screening room at the exclusive members club SoHo House New York. Drawing a glamorous crowd including actors like Zachary Quinto and his partner Miles McMillan. Instagram star Eric Rutherfod, well known artist and author Oliver Jeffers, actress and influencer Sofia Belhouari and the full cast of Trophy Boy.

WATCH TROPHY BOY NOW ON DEKKOO!

Check out some photos from the premier below!

Emrhys Cooper at the premiere of his short film, 'Trophy Boy' — Emrhys Cooper (Director, James)

Zachary Quinto and Emrhys Cooper at the premier of 'Trophy Boy' — Zachary Quinto and Emrhys Cooper @zacharyquinto

Emrhys Cooper and Anthony Johnson at the premiere of 'Trophy Boy' — Emrhys Cooper and AnthonyJohnston (Writer, Andy)

6a00e55229acd68833022ad3ba6e3a200b-800wi — Gerald McCullouch (Mark), Donal Brophy (Tom), Emrhys Cooper (James), Anthony Johnston

6a00e55229acd68833022ad39ac430200d-800wi — Emrhys Cooper and Instagram star Eric Rutherford @mr.rutherford

A subversive gay classic comes to Dekkoo

Back in 1991, Christopher Marlowe’s notorious 16th century play was radically adapted into a gay cinema masterpiece by late, great queer auteur Derek Jarman.

Using anachronistic imagery, modern dress, gay activists battling riot police and Annie Lennox singing Cole Porter, Edward II tells the story of an openly gay British monarch and the persecution he suffered. It’s given a contemporary resonance by Jarman, paralleling the injustice of homophobia at the time.

King Edward II (Stephen Waddington) rejects his cold wife Queen Isabella (Tilda Swinton) and takes a male lover, the commoner Piers Gaveston (Andrew Tiernan) upon whom he bestows gifts and power. The King’s behavior enrages the sober, business-suited court officials and the spurned queen becomes a seething monster whose dresses and jewelry grow more outrageously lavish as her need to vengeance escalates and the plotting begins.

Edward II is a prime example of “New Queer Cinema” – the indie film movement of the early 1990s. Jarman reworked Marlowe’s play into a homoerotic, sexually charged, radically relevant work. Graphic, brutal, moving, surprisingly funny and always erotic, the film blends prose with contemporary jargon and costumes, replete with positive portrayals of queer sex, profanity and ACT- UP activists.

Brilliant, daring and innovative, Edward II showcases gay cinema at its finest. It’s not streaming on Dekkoo.

Kinky Boots is a modest little movie that launched an award-winning Broadway hit

Inspired by a hilarious true story, Kinky Boots is the refreshing, feel-good comedy that launched the multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway musical.

Released in 2005, Joel Edgerton, Nick Frost and Chiwetel Ejiofor, none of whom had quite broken through to major movie stardom (but would soon).

For generations, the Price family has made very sensible, very conservative shoes for men. When young Charlie Price (Edgerton) inherits the struggling business, he turns to an unlikely new creative consultant to save the business from imminent bankruptcy: a sassy cross-dressing cabaret singer (Ejiofor), whose outrageous style and wild designs are a breath of fresh air in the stuffy old factory.

Check out the original trailer for Kinky Boots below and then strut your stuff on over to Dekkoo to watch the full film.

It just takes a few Baby Steps

Two gay dads. One meddling tiger mom. What could go wrong?

Danny (writer-director Barney Cheng), a Taiwanese-American man, longs to have a baby with his American partner Tate (The 10-Year Plan star Michael Adam Hamilton), but their attempts at international surrogacy are complicated by Danny’s meddlesome mom (Grace Guei), who wants to control every aspect of the process – all the way from Taipei.

Co-starring actor/stand-up comedian Jason Stuart, the charming, award-winning family comedy Baby Steps is available now on Dekkoo. Check out the trailer below.

Short Film Spotlight: Sign

Sign is a deeply touching short film that tells the story of a relationship between Ben (Preston Sadleir), a man with the ability to hear, and Aaron (John McGinty), a man who is deaf.

Directed by Andrew Keenan-Bolger, with a screenplay and score by Adam Wachter, this largely silent film, told through vignettes, music and sign language, picked up ten different major awards on it’s journey along the LGBTQIA+ film festival circuit.

Inspired to portray an under-explored human experience, the filmmakers collaborated with hearing-impaired actors from the New York theater community. The film ultimately combined Keenan-Bolger’s passion for visual imagery with Wachter’s love of musical storytelling.

Sign was shot in a four-day marathon session, in multiple locations across New York City, on a set staffed by actors, ASL interpreters, consultants and many passionate volunteers. Now streaming on Dekkoo, this moving short offers fifteen minutes well-spent.

Revisit the controversial 1994 drama ‘Priest’

Not quite as incendiary as it was when it was first released in 1994, or as the theme might suggest, Priest tells the moving, truly provocative story of one clergyman’s struggle for sexual identity and religious idealism.

Linus Roache gives a stirring performance as Father Greg, a newly transferred priest assigned to a parish in a working-class neighborhood of Liverpool. As he comes into conflict with the liberal Father Matthew (Tom Wilkinson, terrific as always), whi is having a scandalous affair with the housekeeper (Cathy Tyson), Father Greg tries to come to terms with his emerging sexuality.

As the heart of this classic film is also the touching story of a sexually abused teen (Christine Tremarco) who confides in Father Greg, thus engaging him in a crisis on conscience.

A remarkably compelling debate on religious dogma, one intended to provoke thought and stir your emotions, Priest made a whole lot of waves when its premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (where it won the People’s Choice Award) back in 1994 – and went onto a wide release in early 1995. The film was loudly condemned by the Catholic Church in Ireland, who called for a ban. Using sound judgement, the Irish Film Censor Board decided to go ahead and allow it to be released… on Easter weekend, no less. This marked one of the first major disagreements between the Church and the Board.

Priest is streaming now on Dekkoo.

Get ‘Woke’ on Dekkoo!

Winner of the “Best Web Series” award at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival in 2017 and the “Best LGBT Series” award at the UK Web Fest that same year, the gay drama series Woke (originally titled Les Engages) is now available to watch on Dekkoo!

The show follows Hicham (Mehdi Meskar), who runs away from his home and comes to Lyon looking for Thibaut (Eric Pucheu), an attractive young man who had tried to kiss him just a few years before… and left a lasting impression.

Thibaut is an activist at the local LGBT Community Center. Hicham soon discovers his world. As his process of self-discovery unfolds, Hicham’s initial apprehension soon turns to enthusiasm. However, he soon comes to find that Thibaut isn’t exactly the person he appears to be.

Check out the trailer below and catch up on all the action on Dekkoo – where all ten episodes of the first season are now streaming.

Get lost in the beauty of ‘Malila: The Farewell Flower’

Former gay lovers Shane and Pitch reunite after years apart and try to heal the wounds of their past. Shane is haunted by the tragic death of his daughter, while Pitch suffers a grave illness, rejecting medical treatment as painful and ineffective. Pitch creates beautiful structures of flowers and banana leaves as a way to cope. Meanwhile, Shane trains to become a Buddhist monk, to build karma for Pitch to either keep him alive or to help in his afterlife. A remarkably beautiful, spiritual film, Malila: The Farewell Flower is as close to transcendent as cinema gets.

Born in Nakhon Phanom, north-eastern Province of Thailand, in 1981, writer-director Anucha Boonyawatana heads up one of the largest video production companies in Thailand. Her student film, Down the River, which, like much of her work, combines Buddhist philosophy, Thai art and a gay love story, won numerous awards and was even given a release in the United States. She followed that up with her debut feature The Blue Hour, which screened in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015.

Malila: The Farewell Flower, Boonyawatana’s second full-length feature, might also be her most gorgeous, haunting and heady. It’s streaming right now on Dekkoo. Check out the trailer below.

Watch the short (soon to be feature) film Breaking Fast

Well-received by critics, audiences and juries at film festivals all around the globe, writer-director Mike Mosallam‘s short film Breaking Fast is currently on the path to becoming a feature film. The original short is now available on Dekkoo!

The 17-minute short follows Mo (Ryan P. Shrime), an Arab-American Muslim man dealing with heartbreak. Soon into the film, Mo meets Kal (Tom Berklund), a very sweet and attractive All-American dude. At first, Mo assumes that the two of them will have little to nothing in common. To his great surprise, however, Kal offers to break fast with him during the month of Ramadan. As the two men learn more and more about each other, they begin to fall in love.

“My intention was to tell a story that my friends and I could see ourselves in – one that spoke to the nuances of daily life and treated identity: religious, sexual, gender and otherwise, as harmonious lenses by which individuals interact with the world around them,” said Mosallam during an interview with the Arab Film Festival, where he was selected as a juror. “When a friend asked what characters in modern cinema I felt best represented my journey, as a Muslim, I was at a complete loss to name one.”

Mosallam is working to change that in ways both big and small – and Breaking Fast is certainly a step in the right direction. Check out the trailer below and make sure to watch the film on Dekkoo.