Film
Avant-garde German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger creates both fictional fantasy worlds that shatter traditional gender constructions and documentaries that examine marginalized peoples.
In addition to scoring over thirty full-length motion pictures, American film composer, editor, and director John Ottman has also created musical compositions for numerous short films, television programs, and commercials.
Thanks to the critical and commercial success of most of his films, Turkish-born Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek has challenged the celluloid closet that silenced or marginalized queerness in Italian film.
None of the films of Russian director Sergei Paradjanov, who spent more than eight years in prison for homosexuality, feature overtly gay themes, but they are infused with a queer sensibility that manifests itself in lyrical tableaux.
One of the most important cultural figures to emerge from post-World War II Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini was a versatile man-of-letters, but he was foremost a filmmaker.
In his personal life, American actor Anthony Perkins often seemed as tortured as the troubled characters he played on film, hiding--and perhaps despising--his true nature while desperately seeking happiness and "normality."
Award-winning actor David Hyde Pierce, best known for his comic performance on the long-running hit comedy television series Frasier, belatedly acknowledged his homosexuality in 2007.
Because pornography is an accepted part of gay male life, performers in gay pornography hold a relatively esteemed position in gay culture and several have emerged as idols and icons.
Bisexual pornography began in earnest during the mid-1980s, but the quality and number of bisexual videos has decreased dramatically since their heyday in the 1980s.
Gay male pornographic film and video, which dates from the release of Wakefield Poole's The Boys in the Sand in 1971, has provided gay men an all-too-rare positive image of gay sexuality.
Although pornography is controversial among lesbians, it has nonetheless been openly embraced by a faction of pro-sex lesbians, and there has emerged a small but growing film and video industry committed to authentic lesbian pornography.
Most of the pornography that features transsexuals is neither made by nor for them, but in recent years trans porn activists have began to produce pornography for transsexual and other queer audiences.
Living the paradoxical life of an openly closeted gay man, songwriter Cole Porter introduced non-normative values and risqué double entendres into what was one of the most pedestrian and hackneyed of cultural forms.
One of Germany's leading gay activists and chroniclers of queer life, filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim makes films intended to foster self-examination by gay people and to advance gay rights.
Director José Quintero made a significant contribution to theater by reviving interest in the works of Eugene O'Neill.
Singer Johnnie Ray caused a sensation in the 1950s with energetic concert performances of hit songs, but his career was damaged by arrests for solicitation and gossip about his sexuality.
One of the most significant and influential American movie directors of the twentieth century, Nicholas Ray created characters and situations that continue to resonate with queer viewers.
Funnyman Charles Nelson Reilly gained fame during the 1970s as a regular guest on game shows and celebrity talk shows, but he was also an accomplished character actor, director, and teacher.
Bisexual British film and stage director Tony Richardson was instrumental in challenging British censorship codes, especially regarding the representation of homosexuals.
African-American filmmaker Marlon Riggs celebrated black culture and gay male sexuality, while exposing homophobia and racism.
One of the pioneers of Pop Art, Larry Rivers was a prolific artist, sculptor, and jazz musician; although he did not identify as a bisexual, the twice-married artist had significant same-sex sexual experience.
At the height of his athletic career, Australian rugby superstar Ian Roberts made the courageous decision to come out as a gay man.
In his 1960s and 1970s images of hikers, bikers, and surfers, photographer and activist Mel Roberts captured the spirit of the California Dream that lured thousands of gay men to the Golden State in search of freedom and opportunity after World War II.
Essayist and memoirist Richard Rodriguez, perhaps the most widely read of Latino-American authors, positions himself as an outsider in America, not only because of his ethnicity, but also because of his sexuality.
Screenwriter and director Don Roos has won plaudits for films that feature gay and lesbian characters and that also give strong roles to women.
Hughes, Langston
Beat Generation
Comedy of Manners
Sedaris, David
Novel: Lesbian
Baudelaire, Charles