Directors: Film
Innovative Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman creates films that are at once experimental and personal and that often feature lesbian content.
Acclaimed cinematographer Néstor Almendros earned fame for the painterliness of his film work, but he also directed documentaries exposing the persecution of homosexuals in Castro's Cuba.
Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's gay and transsexual themed films present absurd situations framed by the trappings of everyday life.
Influential in shaping British cinema in the 1960s, director Lindsay Anderson, who often presented homoerotic elements in his films violently and disturbingly, was tormented by his homosexuality.
One of America's first openly gay filmmakers, and certainly the first whose work addressed homosexuality in an undisguised, self-implicating manner, Kenneth Anger occupies an important place in the history of experimental filmmaking.
The poster boy of radical and militant queer cinema, Gregg Araki disdains the ghettoizing label of "gay filmmaker."
Lesbian filmmaker Dorothy Arzner, the only woman director in 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, made films that convey the varieties of women's experiences and desires and the tenacity of women's relationships with other women.
The films of Anthony Asquith embody for many viewers a quintessential "Britishness," but the director's discretion and refinement were not merely a facet of his art, but also a highly developed way of life for the gay son of a British prime minister.
A leading contemporary American playwright, Jon Robin Baitz produces works that are both morally serious and politically conscious.
Award-winning screenwriter, director, and producer Alan Ball, whose work frequently features glbtq characters, has had great success in both film and television.
Award-winning television director Paris Barclay is also an activist for glbtq rights, including marriage equality and the opportunity to adopt children as he and his husband have done.
Writer, director, and producer Clive Barker is best known for his horror fiction and movies, but is also a prolific painter and illustrator, as well as a developer of comic books and computer games.
Independent filmmaker Paul Bartel's ultimate importance may lie less in his directorial efforts, which are variable in quality, than in his unwavering presence as an inspiring figure in the independent film world, particularly to queer filmmakers.
One of the first primetime television actors to come out publicly as a gay person, Amanda Bearse has developed a second career as a film and television director and has become an outspoken advocate of gay visibility.
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black has quickly established himself as both an accomplished filmmaker and a committed activist.
Bisexual filmmaker Lizzie Borden brings a feminist perspective and a dynamic authenticity to her films about the unexplored politics of women's lives.
Poet, avant-garde film artist, and Dionysian sage, James Broughton more or less created the West Coast experimental film scene.
Actor-writer-director Charles Busch has distinguished himself through his virtuouso performances of "grand dame" characters and through his writing of dramatic vehicles for these roles.
Jean-Daniel Cadinot, French pornographer extraordinaire, has attracted an international following for his audacious films, which manage to be both unusually artistic and enormously arousing.
Versatile British actor Simon Callow has played a wide variety of roles on the stage, in films, and on television, but has remarked on his special affinity for gay roles.
The master of "poetic realism," French filmmaker Marcel Carné created some of the defining films of European cinema.
Award-winning French director, screenwriter, and actor Patrice Chéreau has earned international renown for his visionary, often controversial, productions of opera, theater, and film
Filmmaker Lisa Cholodenko makes movies whose narrative motor is sexual attraction.
French writer and filmmaker Cyril Collard became a key figure in the struggle to revise the representation of AIDS in literature and art.
Having earned critical acclaim for his work on Gods and Monsters (1998), Chicago (2002), and Kinsey (2004), screenwriter and film director William "Bill" Condon has become a leading American filmmaker.
Erotica and Pornography
African-American Literature: Lesbian
Hemingway, Ernest
Forster, E. M.
Williams, Tennessee
St. Sebastian