What’s love got to do? Got to do with it?

Dipping one’s toes into the expansive sea of queer films and TV can be a daunting prospect. Whether you fall under the umbrella of the Alphabet mafia (LGBTQIA2S+) or not, this most elusive of genres focuses primarily on love. Love saccharine, rose-tinted and beaming, love growing like a cactus out of a harsh and unforgiving environment, or blooming in a carefully tended garden of luxury and excess. Love turned sour by disappointment or crushed under society’s indiferent boot. The pull of these tales is the uniqueness of the individual flowers, and the many shades, patterns, petal shapes, and stalk lengths that unfurl if given the right care and attention.

2017 brought Call Me by Your Name, the sun-soaked romance of Elio and Oliver to the big screen. Our hearts frisked in the Mediterranean warmth as Luca Guadagnino’s directorial masterpiece swelled to a delicate classical score, propelling Timothee Chalamet to demi-god status. Suddenly we were all dreaming of Italy and booking one-way Ryanair flights in that direction. For many, this was their first paddle in the world of LGBTQIA2S+ film/TV but honey hold onto your wig, there so much more on offer!

A quick caveat, calling the queer scene a genre can be confusing, paradoxical even, as it dances lightly over many different styles of television and movies. Yet It can be (and will be by me) argued that there is a common focus. People who for whatever reason are pushed to the sides, forced to grow In the dark and are somehow still inexpressibly beautiful. The films and movies I will suggest all try and express that beauty, in song, word, dance, or fleeting eye contact. For anyone interested in life in all its unfiltered complexity and beauty, the real question is “what’s love got to do with it?”

If you enjoyed Call Me by Your Name but found it a little pasty and ciscentric for you, Netflix’s original series Pose is the steaming cup of tea you must sip. Watch it in tandem (or maybe after) the documentary Paris is Burning (which can be found on YouTube in its glorious entirety). Both are set in the ballroom culture of the 1980s New York City. Foregrounding mainly the stories of trans and people of colour this experience is a comic and tragic world of excess, opulence, and hardship, with resilience in the face of it all. Many Drag references (especially on shows such as RuPaul Drag Race) will suddenly click into place, after all “reading is…..fundamental"

Have we whetted your appetite for history? For a closer look at the HIV/AIDS crisis, an important and formative tragedy for the Queer world and the 1980s, Russel T Davis’s Its A Sin (recently on BBC) is a must-see! Dramatizing the harrowing years of this deadly virus and the devastating effect it has had on the community. Not only decimating a generation of gay men but fundamentally changing the governmental discussion of sex and relationships within the United Kingdom (and the world). I warn you to bring the tissue though sweetie as if you’re not sobbing by the end of the first episode you have a shrivelled prune in your thoracic cavity in the place of a heart!

If trials and tribulations are wearing you down, I understand, there is more in the community than tiaras and tears. What about some good old-fashioned cruelty? The Boys in the Band, Netflix’s most recent reincarnation of the 1968 Mart Crowley play of the same name is crammed full of stars such as, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, and Matt Bomer. Watch Parsons spin wildly out of control at a reunion that quickly turns into hell for a group of gay friends in the late 60s. insults, drinking, and self-hatred, another one of the things the gay community does ohh so well. Fasten your seatbelts is going to be a bumpy ride.

But where are the lesbians? I hear you yell, and yes, I can hear you at the back. The community can sometimes feel weighted on the side of gay white men and shows such a Pose and films like Moonlight do try to recalibrate that balance. Lesbian Cinematic history is stuffed full of gems that must be discovered. An unmissable one is Carol, Todd Haynes's decadent, and passionate 1950s love story starring Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Sarah Paulson. The drama is thwarted romance like only the gays know how to accomplish, beautiful in shades of red and brown. The costumes and performances open like a flower, intoxicating and intricate.

Lastly, although I could keep going all day, we branch out from the confines of the English tongue (cheeky)and I throw to you, spinning on its athletic heels the 2019 Georgian film And Then We Danced. Set in the crumbling city of Tbilisi, it follows the cutthroat world of the National Georgian Ensemble for traditional Georgian dancing. The relationship that forms between two male dancers in the incredibly conservative European republic is underscored so beautifully by using Georgian folk music and the frantic movements of the bounding Georgian dance. It captures the cocktail of intensity and shame that is involved in forbidden love.

So there you have it, you sit in the cinema 3 years ago to enjoy love in the Italian sunshine, now you’re bombarded by ballroom battles in Queens, whirling romances in Tbilisi, tragedy and death in London, and insults and recriminations over dinner in Manhattan. This is just the tip of the particularly fabulous iceberg of a genre that isn’t really a genre. But the community is as welcoming as it is diverse, and through these offers, we roll out the red carpet for you at home. Click your red slipper together dear, and turn to Toto, as you're certainly a friend of Dorothy now!