Gay and Lesbian Documentaries - DVD and Video Page 2

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Director Arthur Dong is perhaps best known for his documentary Licensed To Kill, in which he probed the minds of people who murder others for being gay. Though Coming Out Under Fire at least has flashes of humour, it is equally upsetting in the dark secrets that it reveals. Dong shows not only the long tradition of gays in America's military but also their tradition of serving with distinction before meeting with betrayal.

Compassionate, award-winning documentary about individuals coping with HIV. Its heartfelt character portraits will move drama, documentary fans alike, but the devastating emotional impact may be too heavy for casual viewers.

In this documentary about lesbian love, five elderly Swedish women, ages sixty to seventy-five, discuss their lives during a period when homosexuality was considered a perversion. In a poignant and often humorous manner, they talk about budding love and first relationships with women as well as the forced secrecy and loneliness, tracing their personal development from self loathing and forbidden love to a hard-won sense of emotional liberation and social openness. Their touching stories of the life-long search for belonging, love and acceptance is blended with archival materials and slice-of-life footage to provide insights into a generation of women whose fight for liberation led to the formation of the Daughters of Bilitis, Ellen and the Stonewall rebellion.

Ellen Degeneres - The Beginning (2000) Rated: NR - Director: Joel Gallen Purchase Links for this Documentary NTSC Video - Amazon USA Region 1 DVD - Amazon USA PAL Video - Amazon UK Region 2 DVD - Amazon UK DVD or Video - TLA Films USA

This post-coming-out performance fully acknowledges Ellen DeGeneres's status as America's most famous lesbian, but it is nevertheless imbued with a sense of fun. For instance, rather than describe the experience of closet-exiting on her self-titled situation comedy in the late 1990s, she performs an amusing "interpretive dance." She uses her trademark goofiness to ruminate on the necessity of directions on shampoo bottles, ant road rage, and the possible nightmarish consequences of buying cheese. While the performance is not orientation-specific, the comedienne spends a fair amount of time on sex-related issues, including jokes about blow-up dolls and people who videotape their relations. She does venture into the political with an appeal for same-sex marriage and a monologue on meeting God, who turns out to be a middle-aged black woman. None of this fazes her clearly supportive audience at New York's Beacon Theatre who get to ask her questions at the end à la Carol Burnett. The best moment of the 65-minute performance for HBO comes at the end, when DeGeneres accidentally exhibits some gender confusion with a young audience member, who then pays her moving tribute as a role model. - Kimberly Heinrichs (Amazon.com)

Amusing and provocative, this series of four shorts explores the expanding boundaries of female sexuality by focusing on four unique and divergent women, all outcasts from conventional society as well as outlaws from mainstream feminism. Bondage (1983, 20 min) features an unidentified woman explaining the pleasures of bondage and tit torture and the "very warm, very safe, very secure" feeling that comes with it. Annie (1989, 10 min) stars ex-porn actress and performance artist (and self-declared "post-porn modernist") Annie Sprinkle, who offers an entertaining segment in which she transforms "average" women into sex stars and invites the audience to join her in examining and admiring her cervix with the aid of a flashlight and a speculum. Dr. Paglia (1992, 23 min) features Dr. Camile Paglia, professor of Humanities at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, who came into contentious prominence with the publication of her best-selling book, "Sexual Personae," in 1990. The narcissistic, "anti-feminist" feminist and "academic rottweiler" discusses her theories as well as her disastrous sex life. Max (1992, 27 min) is perhaps the most fascinating of the segments. Interviewed is Native American Anita Valerio, who was formerly a stunningly beautiful lesbian but who now, thanks to surgery, is Max, a handsome heterosexual "almost" male. His discussion of the power of testosterone is highly amusing.