BEDSHEET CINEMA PRESENTS

QUEER FILM SERIES
Episode 13
Considering Romance Part II

$$FREE$$

~This is an outdoor screening, please feel free to bring blankets or outdoor chairs to sit on for your comfort~

Please be considerate of the audience and subject-mater, Bedsheet Cinema is a safe-space and anyone who acts otherwise will be asked to leave.

Bring your friends!! SRSLY, having trouble getting LGBTQ people to show up! Makes me sad, but you do you babes.

BYOB

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Hey ya’ll,

We’ll be spending roughly half of this year looking at and talking about AIDS and its impact on the course of LGBT community through the 1980s. I’ll be switching off in-between with more “feel-good” films, especially with the rise of LGBT people in more prominent mainstream films as well as looking further out into a few foreign films that start to finally make their presence known as well. We’ll start the year as the decade started, the rise of a new disease that seemingly struck the gay male community with little remorse and would ultimately alter the shape of not only the gay community but the world at large.

This month we’ll be taking a look at the m/m side of romance, with two films that take place in Britain at very different time periods. One Edwardian, the other contemporary. These films are especially significant in the greater scope of the series for how infrequent romantic films depicting two men are. Both films also feature early roles for two British actors who would obviously go on to bigger things.

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“My Beautiful Laundrette” (1985) Directed by Stephen Frears. An ambitious Pakistani Briton and his white boyfriend strive for success and hope when they open a glamorous laundromat.

“Maurice” (1987) Directed by James Ivory. After his lover rejects him, a young man trapped by the oppressiveness of Edwardian society tries to come to terms with and accept his sexuality.

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For those of you who missed the first one, here’s my mission statement:

My goals for this series is to educate and spread awareness of films not normally sought out by the straight-cis world or even seen by LGBTQ folks who aren’t cinephiles themselves. Through-out the series, I hope for the audience to gain a greater understanding about the outside forces that suppressed our community for so long (and who continue to do so) and how despite everything, LGBTQ characters continued to appear and eventually break-free of the oppressive hollywood/moralist shackles.

Although for many decades, LGBTQ characters were not shown under a flattering lens and were often sad, suicidal or muderous people, I will do my best to showcase the rare instances of characters being able to take some positive ownership of their sexualities in addition to the darker more “problematic” films.

Also, due to how western society works as well as the distribution of wealth and technology, the majority of the films, at least through the 1970s will also mostly be cis, white and male, but rest assured that there will be more diverse films as the series comes along. I hope to have a few “specials” inbetween the chronological order we will be watching the films in to break things up; including documentaries on LGBT historical/popular figures and films that are Queer-Coded starring LGBTQ icons.

I’m doing my best to read-up on as much LGBTQ film theory/history as I can and will be happy to moderate discussion after the films have been shown!

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Tags: 〰〰 bedsheet cinema, "~~ Bedsheet Cinema, Chicago, Considering Romance II, Illinois, James Ivory., Logan Square, Stephen Frears.