Category: Classic

Queer Classics: We Were One Man

Years ahead of its time, We Were One Man is a period piece, originally released in France in 1979, that dared to depict a budding romance between two men.

From director Philippe Vallois, the film tells a story of gay love between two soldiers. Guy (Serge Avedikian), a peasant farmer, is trying to live a simple life during the turmoil of World War II. He lives in a small farmhouse outside a sleepy village in France, where he has almost no friends.

Everything starts to change when he stumbles across Rolf (Piotr Stanislas), an injured German soldier. The simple, naive Guy brings Rolf home and nurses him back to health. While convalescing, a relationship slowly builds between the two men.

Soon the pair are frolicking naked in the woods and swimming in the stream. Thin, boyish Guy is a contrast to the blond, hard bodied Rolf. The passion that stirs between them that becomes hard to deny. As their connection grows deeper, they find a happy escape in one another, content to be sheltered and loved… until the war asserts itself back into their lives.

We Were One Man is now available on Dekkoo.

Girls Will Be Girls is celebrating its 20th anniversary!

Celebrating its 20-year anniversary, the drag-tastic queer comedy classic Girls Will Be Girls stars Jack Plotnick, Jeffrey Roberson and Clinton Leupp (better known as drag icon Coco Peru) as three actresses at various places on the Hollywood food chain who navigate the minefield of love, aging and irrepressible ambition.

Plotnick stars as Evie Harris, a washed-up, alcoholic, aging C-list actress who lives a Norma Desmond lifestyle in a woefully out-of-date bungalow. Her roommate, Coco, is a lonely doormat of a spinster who carries a torch for the handsome young doctor who performed her abortion years ago.

When the pair take in new roommate Varla Simonds, the voracious, starry-eyed daughter of Evie’s former rival, their lives are turned upside down. Tensions and jealousies among the three women reach a boiling point and treachery soon rears its ugly head.

Paying homage to camp classics like Valley of the Dolls, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Mommie Dearest – not to mention All About Eve – Girls Will Be Girls is a delightfully outrageous comedy that revels in good old-fashioned drag bitchery.

Watch the trailer for Girls Will Be Girls below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.

Pride Month Spotlight: Queer Docs

For Pride Month this year, we wanted to shine a spotlight on some amazing documentaries.

A mix of films both underseen and celebrated, heartbreaking and triumphant, with varied tones and subject matter, this collection of docs take us deep inside true queer stories of life, loss and love.

Bridegroom, Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine and Gemmel & Tim tell true stories of people taken from us too soon, but whose lives and legacies have left us left us changed for the better.

50 Years of Fabulous, Oriented, A Queer Country and Pride & Protest take us to specific places to celebrate the power of community. Drag Race star Jamal Sims’ doc When the Beat Drops offers up a fun and fast-paced history of bucking in Atlanta.

An Act of Love and This is What Love in Action Looks like capture activism in unlikely places. Finally, Electroboy and Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood explore two fascinating queer figures from two very different time periods.

The Pride Month Spotlight: Queer Docs collection is available on Dekkoo now – and all throughout the month of June.

Browse The Classic Queer Cinema Collection – 9 Groundbreaking Films Now Available on Dekkoo!

Dekkoo isn’t just a source for entertainment. We also offer a deeply engaging crash course in queer cinema history!

Starting with Queens at Heart, an eye-opening short film offering a look into the lives of four trans women during the pre-Stonewall 1960s, and continuing through to director Ira Sachs electrifying 2012 relationship drama Keep the Lights On, this collection exemplifies some of the most important queer cinema of the past five decades.

Including films like the landmark 1973 docudrama A Bigger Splash and Todd Haynes’ brazenly original Poison, which took the 1991 Sundance Film Festival by storm and helped launch the New Queer Cinema movement, these pioneering selections offer up a vibrant and expansive trip through time.

You can browse The Classic Queer Cinema Collection right now on Dekkoo. All of the titles are currently streaming.

The powerful gay drama The Last Match celebrates it’s 10th anniversary this year

Originally released in 2013, The Last Match centers on an intense love affair between two seemingly straight young men.

Reiner and Yosvani are best friends and soccer mates. Handsome Reinier, in order to support his mother, his wife and their baby turns to sex work. Meanwhile, the shy Yosvani is reluctantly engaged to a girl and lives with her and her bombastic loan shark father.

After a furtive kiss at a nightclub, the two young men quickly fall hard for one another. And as their love intensifies, the challenge is not with them but with their unforgiving Havana neighborhood… a place from which they desperately want to escape.

The two leads are charismatic and unforgettable as the super-charged lovers in this powerful drama from director Antonio Hens.

Celebrating it’s 10-year anniversary this year, The Last Match is now available on Dekkoo.

Ira Sachs’ emotional gay relationship drama Keep the Lights On comes to Dekkoo

The critically-acclaimed 2012 relationship drama Keep the Lights On chronicles the emotionally and sexually charged journey of two men in New York City through love, friendship and addiction.

Documentary filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and closeted lawyer Paul (Zachary Booth) meet through a casual encounter, but soon find a deeper connection and become a couple.

Individually and together, they are risk takers – compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity while being true to himself.

The film’s fearlessly personal screenplay, written by director Ira Sachs (The Delta, Love is Strange, Little Men, Frankie) is anchored by Lindhardt, who embodies Erik’s isolation and vulnerability with a gentle presence. Harrowing and romantic, visceral and layered, Keep the Lights On is a film that looks at love and all of its manifestations, taking it to dark depths and bringing it back to a place of grace.

Watch the trailer for Keep the Lights On below. The film is available now on Dekkoo.

Beyond Gravity, a gay ’80s classic from New Zealand, has been newly restored!

Richard (Robert Pollock) is an astronomy-obsessed worrier who spends the majority of his time fantasizing about outer space and the cosmos – an activity which antagonizes his friends and family.

One day, Richard meets Johnny (Iain Rea), a handsome Italian man with an enormous appetite for life, who finally offers Richard the love he’s been missing – as well as a much-needed escape from the monotony of work.

A joyous celebration of the love between two eccentrics who both have their sights aimed firmly amongst the stars, Beyond Gravity is a true underground ’80s gay classic.

Originally filmed in Auckland, New Zealand in 1988, this lost 50-minute film has been digitally remastered for a new 2K restoration thanks to the cult indie distribution label Altered Innocence. Now Beyond Gravity is available once again to make audiences think and swoon.

Beyond Gravity is now available on Dekkoo. You can watch an excerpt from the film below.

Short Film Spotlight: The Kiss on the Cliff

The early 1980s were a difficult time to be LGBTQ+. AIDS was considered a death sentence, gay people were frequently shunned by their families and bisexual men and women often let their same-sex attractions go unexplored.

Made in 1993, The Kiss on the Cliff is a deeply moving 21-minute short from accomplished director Reid Waterer. The film begins in 1983, in the small town of Rock Springs, Wyoming, with an attempted kiss between best friends Mark and Steve, played by Stephen Wolfe Smith and Tom Tarantini.

Their deep feeling for one another has sent ripples of tension through every aspect of their lives and forced both of them to question whether their desire is worth the risk.

Flashing forward ten years later, the two are reunited. Though they find that their lives have followed very different courses, their relationship still demands some kind of resolution.

Recently restored, The Kiss on the Cliff offers up a unique look at a different era in both gay life and gay indie cinema.

Watch a super short trailer for The Kiss on the Cliff below. The film is now available on Dekkoo.