Culture

If you are in London over the next 10 days, head to Barbican for the free exhibition Out and About! Archiving LGBTQ+ history at Bishopsgate Institute. This selection of objects shares 40 moments in London’s LGBTQ+ history to celebrate Barbican’s 40th birthday. Bishopsgate Institute collects and archives a wide range of artefacts to chart the lived experience of Londoners. This installation includes items of pride, protest, performance and art and is a moving testament to how much has been achieved, how much still remains to be done and the importance of sharing experiences and concerns across a community. With zines that you can sit and read, protest badges, banners and placards, and posters and photos, as well as some outfits and costumes, the exhibit is beautifully presented. Seein...

Franz Rogowski is magnificent in this moving drama which spans 25 years of German post-war queer history. He plays Hans, a gay man who refuses to compromise his life, despite the horrors of Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, which made homosexual acts between men a crime. The story slowly builds, moving between 1945, 1954 and 1969 (when the law was eased, although it was not repealed until 1994). The film opens with scenes of men cottaging in toilets, before we see Hans returned to a prison which he clearly knows well, weary but resigned to his fate, and soon in an obviously familiar solitary confinement cell. As the story moves between the decades, we see various of Hans’s lovers, both in and out of jail, but we also see his relationship with his first cell mate. Viktor (Georg ...

Caz Davis (Elz Carrad) returns to his New Zealand home town to reconcile with his past, his father and his friends. Since leaving the dairy community of Rūrangi ten years earlier, he has come out as transgender and is an activist in the city. But he hasn’t been in touch with his family or friends since leaving, so they don’t recognise him, and his father also needs to forgive Caz for missing his mother’s funeral. Caz also catches up with his best friend Anahera (Awahina Rose Ashby), who is reconnecting with her Māori heritage, and former boyfriend Jem (Arlo Green), who now finds himself reassessing his sexuality as he learns the truth about Caz. Adapted from a New Zealand web series, this moving and informative story is the epitome of why we need broader representation in the cinema....

Celebrate the start of LGBT+ History Month with a free screening of the fabulous documentary REBEL DYKES plus short film OLDER THAN WHAT? Newham Community Cinema presents a celebration of LGBT+ culture on film with curated conversations and special guests brought to you free by Newham Council and in partnership with Women Over Fifty Film Festival. Rebel Dykes is a glorious post-punk roar of lesbian energy. With a mash-up of animation, archive footage and interviews, the documentary tells the story of the radical dyke scene in the late 1980s. Meeting at Greenham Common, the found family of friendships and lovers moved largely to south London squats and found their energy in BDSM nightclubs, sex-positive partying and political activism. With a superb soundtrack and a cheeky sense of hu...

Mark Holocaust Remembrance Day by watching Son of Saul, an intense, brutal but enriching film which puts you right in the shoes and soul of a Jewish concentration camp prisoner. This brilliant film from Hungarian director László Nemes won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016. It follows Saul Ausländer (a magnificent performance from Géza Röhrig), who is in the Sonderkommando, the cadre of Jewish prisoners forced to assist in the machinery of the Nazi camps. During the course of his ‘work’, he finds the corpse of a boy he is sure is his son, and is determined to save the body from the flames and to find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and give the boy a proper burial. While around him there is a plot by some prisoners to rise up against the camp guards, Saul i...